Just a tenth of NHS staff on Teesside had covid jabs this winter, with less than half taking up flu vaccinations.
The alarming statistics were revealed at an NHS board meeting, where a group chief said people were “exercising individual choice” and they could not be “compelled” to have vaccinations. The issue was raised at a board meeting of the Universities Tees Group, covering both the North Tees and Hartlepool and South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trusts.
Chair Professor Derek Bell asked about the rates, saying on Tuesday (January 7): “I did bring it up with NHS England, not so much about this year but what we’re going to do for next year. How are we doing?”
Chief people officer Rachael Metcalf said: “We’re just under 40% for both North Tees and South Tees for flu, and for Covid we’re 9% for South Tees and 10.5% for North Tees and Hartlepool.” A report of the group’s people committee had shared flu vaccination rates of 30.9% for South Tees, 34% for North Tees and Hartlepool, and for Covid 7.9% at South Tees, 8.9% North Tees and Hartlepool.
The report stated: “Action has been requested, noting that Covid is not nationally mandated.” Group chief executive Stacey Hunter told the meeting: “It’s a tricky one, isn’t it? Those rates are low, we can’t get away from that.
“They’re low across the board actually. There’s always some variation nationally because we serve very different communities, our staff are recruited from our local communities so this is reflective of that.
Stacey Hunter
(Image: handout)
“There isn’t a way to compel, the NHS looked at that and that was out in the public domain when we were in the midst of Covid and could you compel public vaccination? There wasn’t a way to achieve that.
“We continue with all of our influence and our trying to persuade staff of the benefits of the flu jab, both to them and their loved ones etc. But it is persistently low.
“It’s a worry for us, largely because you don’t want your staff and/or your local community to be suffering the effects of what we know as being quite a difficult flu season. But there’s only in the end so much influence you can put into this.
“I think the NHS, to be fair to it, provides all sorts of different incentives and information. And you get down to people are exercising individual choice.”
‘We can only do so much’
Non-executive director Liz Barnes asked: “Do we track the number of staff who are absent with flu and Covid, whether we’re getting any spikes?” Ms Hunter replied: “We know we do.”
Non-executive director Mark Dias said: “We can only do so much. We’ve done as much as we can as an employer to try and encourage it to happen.”
Group chief medical officer Mike Stewart, who had urged Teessiders to get vaccinated after a huge increase in patients admitted to hospital with flu – more than 100 per week in December – said: “I think there’s been lots of work done but anecdotally there’s been more reports of staff saying they’ve found the information and accessing the vaccine harder. We don’t quite understand why because we think it’s been quite obvious.
“I think next year we will probably see a higher pick-up because this year’s been a bad year. We should probablythink much earlier about planning a campaign of how we advertise it and roll of it than we did this year because it felt quite late.
Dr Mike Stewart is group chief medical officer for University Hospitals Tees
(Image: North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust)
“There are trusts in the north of England with an 80% flu uptake that tended to have quite different humour-based campaigns to raise awareness and get staff talking about it. I think we should be looking early once we come out of winter to what we’re going to to different next year.”
Ms Hunter said: “The fundamental, the thing that works well everywhere, is peer vaccinators. You have to have a peer vaccinator in every single team essentially.
“That is your best opportunity to do that with people when they’re ready to have it and they don’t have to get on a bus. We should major our effort on peer vaccination.”
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