Beliefs on mandatory influenza vaccination of health care workers in nursing homes: a questionnaire study from the Netherlands.

OBJECTIVES

To assess whether nursing homes (NHs) made organizational improvements to increase influenza vaccination rates in healthcare workers (HCWs) and to quantify the beliefs of NH administrators on the arguments used in favor of implementation of mandatory influenza vaccination of HCWs.

DESIGN

Anonymous questionnaire study.

SETTING

Dutch NHs.

PARTICIPANTS

Dutch NH administrators.

MEASUREMENTS

Influenza vaccination rates in NH residents and NH HCWs, organizational aspects of influenza vaccination of HCWs, and agreement of respondents with arguments in favor of implementation of mandatory influenza vaccination in HCWs.

RESULTS

Of the 310 distributed questionnaires, 185 were returned (response rate 59.7%). The average vaccination rate in NH HCWs was 18.8% and in NH residents was 91.6%. In all, 126 (68.1%) NHs had a written policy, 161 (87.0%) actively requested that their employees be immunized, and 161 (87.0%) offered information to HCWs in any way. Despite the fact that the majority of NH administrators (>69%) agreed with all arguments in favor of implementation of mandatory influenza vaccination, only a minority (24.3%) agreed that mandatory vaccination should be implemented if voluntary vaccination fails to reach sufficient vaccination rates.

CONCLUSION

Despite the low vaccination rate of NH HCWs, most NH administrators did not support mandatory influenza vaccination of NH HCWs.