The H1N1 Flu Vaccine

Our hospital finally received a batch of the swine flu vaccine today and without hesitation I filled out the consent form and got the shot right away.

But first let me tell you what the posted official hospital guidelines are. Employees who decline the vaccine are supposed to wear a mask if they are treating a patient with suspected H1N1 flu, and they have to replace the mask every four hours. Unofficially, an email was sent to the charge nurses saying that employees who refuse the vaccine are supposed to work their full shift wearing a mask. Hah! Let’s see how long that’s going to last before someone sees the ridiculousness of that practice. The worker has no symptoms plus the patient has no symptoms so there is no practical reason to do it. It’s bad enough that some of these patients are already paranoid. It would only worsen their irrational fear by seeing staffmembers walking around with their masks on. I thought this was only exclusive to the mental health units but as I type this I learned that it was a hospital wide directive. I don’t know where our hospital got this idea from so I’m beginning to wonder if other hospitals are doing it too and we are just following the rest. The intent is good, but is it practical and realistic? We shall find out in the ensuing weeks.

I was all set to get my vaccination and exposed my left arm for the nurse who happens to be the supervisor for the unit I work in. Since I received the seasonal flu shot on my right arm two weeks ago, it was my left arms’ turn. I hardly felt the prick, but then I heard the nurse say “Oh! I hit a vein!” I thought she was joking until I saw some blood in the syringe after she drew it back away from my arm. So she had to draw another dose and give me another shot on my right arm. This time it went well, if not I would have offered my buttocks next, and my co-workers in the nurses’ station wouldn’t have relished that scene. Some of the other nurses later commented that the supervisor hit my deltoid muscle too low on the first shot and since my arm is tiny and the needle a little long, there was more of a chance of hitting a vein, or at worse, a bone. Oh well, that never happened to me before and the supervisor said it was the first time for her too.

More of my co-workers declined having the vaccination than the ones who had it. Maybe they wanted to find out first how our bodies would react to it first before they decide if they wanted it or not. This is probably what being a guinea pig feels like J.