December 6, 2010
A couple of weeks before setting out on the Thanksgiving trip to hike in the New River Gorge area and dine with family at a bistro in Asheville, North Carolina, John and I got our flu shots. This year, the shot combines the swine flu shot with the ‘regular’ flu shot so that you will not be offered two…but instead get two for the price of one. I hadn’t paid much attention to this fact until arriving for the appointment to get the shot.
I have adopted the view that getting a flu shot is something I should do, even though I find that end up with a bruised arm that I can’t sleep on for a couple of days. I do it because I teach a lot of college students who come and go from their hometowns across the northeast and beyond, and they work in area establishments with many customers. So, protecting me and protecting them…the public good angle of public health discussed in the book.
How does informed content about the flu vaccine work for you when you get the flu shot? For me, it went like this. Here is a form for your to read whenever you have time and want to. Are you allergic to eggs?
Vaccine information sheets are not quite the same as informed consent documents for surgery. We don’t have to sign a vaccine information sheet. Why? I suppose because so often, shots are being given to lots of people in a small span of time.
Perhaps because shots are given by so many different types of health care staff and a wide range of questions might be asked, making it hard to provide training for responses. And, shots are supposed to benefit the public in general. So, identifying the possible risk of receiving a shot–such as being allergic to eggs and the flu vaccine–becomes a shorthand method of informed consent.
Recently, there has been some effort to encourage those with egg allergies to talk with their doctors about the flu vaccine. An article on Science Daily discusses the issues [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101018121440.htm]. Take a look…
I choose to comment on this blog because I can relate to it in a way. This past fall, we were offered a flu shot through the University. I say we meaning our baseball team here at Penn State. We were offered to get a flu shot, free of charge, on two different days. I was debating whether or not to get this shot because my freshman year I got it and was sick for the next few days. A few others had gotten sick as well and then everyone started to debate the decision. Anyway, this fall I ended up deciding to do it. It was a different kind of “procedure” because we didn’t go to the doctor’s office or hospital as you would for a normal flu shot with your regular doctor. This time we just went to East Area Locker Room on campus, went into a room and that’s where the nurse waited with many needles. We were told this fall that they required us to get this shot. So basically saying it was mandatory. However, when we went into the office one by one, we were offered whether or not we wanted to get the shot. We had to sign off a sheet and answer a few yes or no questions. So now I was even more debating what to do since now I really had the option. Keeping everything in mind, I ended up signing off the papers to let the nurse inject me with this flu shot. In the end I am glad I got the shot as I did not sick and prevented any further sicknesses. I asked questions during it to make sure I was doing the right thing.
It looks like in my previous comment the HTML links for examples of online flu assessment tools were missing. Here they are, once more!
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/flu-symptoms/FU00013
http://www.flu.gov/evaluation/
https://h1n1.cloudapp.net/fluquiz.aspx
Thank you for the post, Dr. Parrott. That was an interesting read and the link to the Science Daily was rather comprehensive in summarizing the research on egg-allergy issue.
In line with my own research interest, I have found a few online Flu Assessment tools, but they barely (or never) cover the aspect of flu shot or its potential side effects. (You can see some examples and and ). Considering how these tools are geared toward “informing” the general public (instead of stopping at simple evaluations of the likelihood of whether one has the flu or not), I think, these online tools are a great and logical venue to embed such allergy and side-effect information. This way, when individuals arrive at their health care appointment, they are better informed before they provide their actual informed consent.
The http://www.flu.gov website does have a handy table toward the end of this page that mentions egg-allergy http://www.flu.gov/individualfamily/vaccination/index.html