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Clinical Situations In Nursing Care

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Clinical Situations Position Paper
Kelli B. Teems
University of West Georgia
Professional Nursing Concepts (Nurs 4102)
Professor J. Wilder, MSN, NP-C
April 7, 2015

Part 4 – Immunity and Health Policy
Vaccination has been known to provide immunity to a variety of illnesses, including influenza. To minimize influenza-related deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that vulnerable people and health care workers (HCW) be vaccinated against influenza annually (van den Dool, Bont, Hak, Heijne & Wallinga, 2008). A topic of debate between HCWs and healthcare facilities is the discussion over whether annual influenza shots should be mandatory. Multiple studies have been completed to determine if the benefits are substantial enough …show more content…
The deaths occurred in the hospital’s bone marrow unit. At the time of the incident, only twelve percent of the HCWs employed in the unit had been vaccinated against the flu. Another example of a fatal flu outbreak occurred in a Canadian neonatal intensive care unit when one baby died and nineteen others became sickened. In this instance, only fifteen percent of HCWs were vaccinated. In both examples, the lack of vaccinated healthcare providers likely contributed to the fatalities but there is no proof that the outbreaks could have been prevented by simply requiring the employees to be vaccinated (Yasmin, 2013). Even if one is to believe that the lack of vaccinations among the HCWs involved contributed to the fatalities, there were no laws broken because there were no laws in place that required the healthcare providers to be vaccinated. According to the Center for Disease Control (2014), to date, only ten states in the U.S. have laws in place that require healthcare employees to be vaccinated against the influenza …show more content…
HCWs are exposed to patients with influenza in the workplace and are therefore at a higher risk of contracting the virus as well as transmitting the virus to other patients and other HCW. Beginning in 2007, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health-Care Organizations (JCAHCO) exercised its policy-making authority and required accredited organizations to offer influenza vaccinations to staff, including volunteers and licensed independent practitioners and to report coverage levels among staff (Shefer et al., 2011). During a clinical rotation an interesting discussion took place among the staff nurses. The conversation was regarding the current hospital policy requiring all staff to receive annual influenza vaccines. The discussion was heated between those who believed that the influenza vaccination should be mandatory, and those who felt that vaccinations should be voluntary. The conversation sparked a debate among students regarding health policy and its impact on what could be considered a personal

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