Healthcare Immunizations

Healthcare organizations should establish a comprehensive written policy regarding immunizing personnel, develop a listing of all required and recommended immunizations, and refer all staff to the employee health function to receive education needed for their positions. The employee health 

Healthcare personnel should meet the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practice (ACIP) guidelines for immunization against mumps, rubella, diphtheria, and measles. Consider the need for the following vaccinations  

Strongly Recommended Diseases posing special risks including hepatitis B, influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella. 

Recommended in Some Situations Active and/or passive immunizations as indicated by job circumstances to prevent occurrences of tuberculosis, hepatitis A, meningitis, and typhoid fever. 

Recommended for All Adults Immunization for tetanus, diphtheria, and pneumonia disease. 

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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has incorporated pneumococcal and influenza immunization rates into some of their quality standards. Patients admitted to a hospital for community-acquired pneumonia should be screened for, offered, and vaccinated with pneumococcal and influenza vaccines prior to discharge if not previously administered. In physicians office practice, all persons over 65 years of age who have been hospitalized in the past year should be screened for, offered, and vaccinated with pneumococcal and influenza vaccines if not previously administered. Both of these standards will affect payment if the standard is not met. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has also incorporated these standards into their accreditation reviews of health care facilities. 

For example, methiciUin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a strain of bacteria that has become resistant to methicUhn. In healthy individuals, the S. aureus, though present, does not cause active infection. But in the immune suppressed and the elderly, S. aureus infection can result in morbidity and mortality. Worse still is the fact that MRSA is spread in healthcare institutions and community centers such as hospitals, medical centers, nursing homes, childcare centers, gymnasiums, and confined living quarters. The terms HA-MRSA and CA-MRSA refer to hospital-associated and community-associated MRSA. 

Hepatitis B vaccine (inactivated B virus surface antigen adsorbed on aluminium hydroxide adjuvant) provides active immunity against hepatitis B infection, and in coimtries of low endemicity it is given to individuals at high risk, including healthcare professionals. Immunity is conferred for at least 5 years and can be supplemented by booster injections. 

However, because of the possibility of a smallpox attack, albeit remote, in December 2002 President Bush announced his preevent vaccination plan. Instead of mass vaccination, the plan, based on recommendations from the CDC, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) makes smallpox vaccination available for people designated by public health authorities to conduct investigation and follow-up of initial... 

Center for Disease Control. Immunization of healthcare workers. Recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Hospital Infection Control Practices Advising Committee (HICPAC). Morb. Mort. Wkly. Rep. 1997, 46, RR-18. 

If antibodies are detected in sufficient quantity, then the patient is immune to the disease. If the antibodies are not detected, then the patient needs to be revaccinated. Healthcare professionals are required to be vaccinated for many coimnon communicable diseases in order to prevent acquiring the disease and passing the disease along to patients. 

Rapid and intense teaching programs helped prepare our medical healthcare providers, so that by the onset of Operation Desert Storm, they were as ready as any military medical personnel might be to go to war. Hundreds of thousands of troops were supplied with chemical pretreatment and therapeutic agents and thousands were immunized against anthrax and the botulinum toxins, the two most likely biological... 

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