Abstract
Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at high risk of influenza infection and can easily spread the disease. Malaysia Ministry of Health has been introducing a free influenza vaccination program for HCWs. However, the uptake remains low due to the doubt in the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine. The objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of influenza vaccination in reducing influenza-related work absenteeism among HCWs. A cross-sectional study was carried out in two tertiary hospitals in Perak. It involved 774 nurses and assistant medical officers who were selected using simple random sampling. The study used a self-administered questionnaire that contained a section on sociodemographic characteristics, uptake of the influenza vaccination based on the 2016/2017 influenza season and the number of sick days due to influenza symptoms in the year of 2017. The influenza vaccination uptake was 25.5%. A total of 136 (17.6%) HCWs reported taking sick leave in the past 12 months. Sick leave was reported more often by non-vaccinated HCWs (18.1%, mean 0.41±1.25) than by vaccinated HCWs (16.2%, mean 0.27±0.75) (p =0.3881), although the difference was not statistically significant. However, the total number of workdays lost due to influenza among non-vaccinated HCWs was four times higher than that among the vaccinated group in the studied hospitals (225 days/year in the non-vaccinated group vs 53 days/year in the vaccinated group). This finding could motivate policy makers to strengthen the implementation of an influenza vaccination programme among HCWs and to encourage HCWs to be immunised against influenza.
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@proceedings{APCPH-2019-158,
title = {Effectiveness of Influenza Vaccination on Absenteeism of Health Care Workers in Tertiary Hospitals in Perak, Malaysia},
author = {Rosidah Omar},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-07-22},
urldate = {2019-07-22},
journal = {6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Public Health 2019 Proceedings},
issue = {6},
abstract = {Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at high risk of influenza infection and can easily spread the disease. Malaysia Ministry of Health has been introducing a free influenza vaccination program for HCWs. However, the uptake remains low due to the doubt in the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine. The objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of influenza vaccination in reducing influenza-related work absenteeism among HCWs. A cross-sectional study was carried out in two tertiary hospitals in Perak. It involved 774 nurses and assistant medical officers who were selected using simple random sampling. The study used a self-administered questionnaire that contained a section on sociodemographic characteristics, uptake of the influenza vaccination based on the 2016/2017 influenza season and the number of sick days due to influenza symptoms in the year of 2017. The influenza vaccination uptake was 25.5%. A total of 136 (17.6%) HCWs reported taking sick leave in the past 12 months. Sick leave was reported more often by non-vaccinated HCWs (18.1%, mean 0.41±1.25) than by vaccinated HCWs (16.2%, mean 0.27±0.75) (p =0.3881), although the difference was not statistically significant. However, the total number of workdays lost due to influenza among non-vaccinated HCWs was four times higher than that among the vaccinated group in the studied hospitals (225 days/year in the non-vaccinated group vs 53 days/year in the vaccinated group). This finding could motivate policy makers to strengthen the implementation of an influenza vaccination programme among HCWs and to encourage HCWs to be immunised against influenza.},
note = {Type: POSTER PRESENTATION; Organisation: Department of Social Preventive Medicine, University of Malaya},
keywords = {Effectiveness, healthcare worker, influenza, prevalence, vaccination},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}