Scientists have now developed an approved vaccine for the A(H1N1) or swine flu virus. The UK has contracts in place with two manufacturers – Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Baxter.
The European Commission has granted a licence for both the GSK vaccine, known as Pandemrix, and the Baxter vaccine, Celvapan.
This means both vaccines will soon be available for administration to priority groups, including frontline NHS staff, when supplies arrive from the manufacturers.
Vaccination against swine flu will help protect staff, their families and their patients from the swine flu virus and is an important element of the NHS resilience strategy.
Traditionally, take up of the seasonal flu vaccine among NHS staff has been very low. To ensure staff take-up, local vaccination programmes must be well resourced, visible and easily accessible and will require effective joint leadership with local staff side organisations in terms of both communications and logistical planning.
It is important to have jointly agreed plans in place to administer the vaccine, in the first instance, to staff in priority groups.
Many of you will already have started planning for your vaccination programme. To assist with your planning, the Social Partnership Forum has identified the top six things that your organisation can do now in preparation for the impending vaccine administration.
1. Map your organisation
- Identify how many staff you have who are competent to administer vaccinations.
- Know where vaccinators are located and their availability to administer vaccines.
- Examine your vaccinating capacity. How many staff are competent to administer the vaccination for staff in the priority groups? How many staff are available to vaccinate the rest of your work force as more vaccine becomes available?
- The GSK vaccination will be administered to staff in one injection. Staff can also receive the normal seasonal winter flu vaccine with the swine flu vaccination.
- For those in primary care & GP practices - consider how many staff will be delivering the vaccine to patients and identify your capacity to administer to staff also.
2. Staffing
- Anticipate how many additional staff may be needed to deliver the vaccination programme.
- Include administrative staff to help facilitate the documentation.
- Can you operate the service out of hours? Can this be in the same location?
- Basic training for new vaccinators or refresher training for existing vaccinators may be required according to HPA guidelines. Ensure that vaccinators are fully trained to administer vaccines.
3. Practicalities of administration
- Staff rosters can run over a 24-hour period. Can you provide vaccinations 24/7 to allow for varying shift times?
- Identify places within your organisation to administer the vaccine in addition to your occupational health department.
Can you use an outpatient clinic or specific room in your workplace?
- Identify additional supplies of equipment you might need. For example, sharps bins for disposal.
4. Supervision
- Staff delivering vaccinations will be adding this extra duty to their current workload. Do they have the capacity to take on this duty as well as their day-to-day tasks?
- Provide additional access to senior nursing or clinical support for vaccinating staff should they need support or guidance.
5. Occupational Health
- What IT system does your occupational health department use - is your system able to be operated in remote locations via laptop with wireless connection?
- Test your data collection system. Do you need to make any changes to your system to enable you to collect & monitor vaccination information?
- Monitor staffing levels in your occupational health department. Ensure there is enough capacity and allow for absence contingency plans.
6. Budgets
- Examine your organisation’s financial capacity to deliver a vaccination program. Ensure budgets are in place for your local vaccination programme.
- Communications activities, as part of a strategy to address concerns and doubts regarding staff vaccination, are currently underway. Research into staff attitudes towards the seasonal and swine flu vaccines has produced insights which have informed this strategy. For example, staff feel have concerns about vaccine safety and question its value. However, they also recognise that swine flu will seriously impact on services this winter, and they need to be healthy to do their job properly. They are also motivated by a high sense of professional responsibility towards colleagues and patients.
Communications will support your local vaccination programme and aims to encourage take-up by:
- Making a compelling case for staff vaccination – by appealing to the sense that staff have of professional responsibility to their colleagues, to their patients – and to themselves
- Addressing safety concerns with authoritative, factual and accessible content
- Encouraging visible clinical engagement and leadership;
ensuring staff know when and where to get their vaccine;
positioning the vaccine as integral to the NHS resilience strategy.
Communications products
Communication products will be made available to your organisation through Strategic health authority (SHA) communication channels.
Products will include:
- posters for display in local staff areas
- scripts for local briefings
- factsheets , Q&As and mythbusters
- signposting for staff vaccination points
- digital artwork for use on local intranet sites and staff email.
Please contact your SHA communications lead for further information or find out more from the Department of Health website.
Read more SPF information on the issues associated with pandemic flu here.