Should healthcare workers be required to be vaccinated against influenza?

摘要

Every year as flu season approaches, healthcare in-istitutions strive to vaccinate employees and achieve high vaccination rates. And every year many institutions fail to meet their vaccination goals. Influenza vaccination mandates are often considered as a way to achieve vaccination goals for healthcare employees (Nair, Holmes, Rudan, & Car, 2012). However, there is significant controversy surrounding vaccination mandates.Some people oppose influenza vaccine mandates for religious reasons (Lantos et al., 2010). Others oppose mandates because of ethical reasons, specifically a violation of autonomy. Physicians and nurses take an oath to do no harm; does this oath include taking the chance of contracting influenza and possibly passing it on a patient? Perhaps it does when the autonomy of those caregivers is threatened. When implementing influenza mandates to prevent nosocomial infections in hospitalized and institutionalized vulnerable patients, many would argue that these mandates override employees' autonomy.