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Networks and practices are planning in earnest for a more complex flu vaccination season involving all the normal the challenges of ensuring adequate staffing numbers, facilities and PPE are in place – and the right levels of vaccine are in stock. This year’s campaign is additionally complicated by the confusion about how the immunisation programme can be delivered practically in the era of Covid and the near constant changes in national guidance. This week’s podcast features a panel of experts in Practice Managers Robyn Clark and Nicola Davies who, together with Ben, try to unpick some of the issues and give an insight into their own preparations in order to support others in planning for winter 2020.
A panel of experts (0:09)
Introductions (0:45)
Robyn practice and professional background (1:11)
Nicola’s PCN, practice and career history (1:54)
Changes to the flu vaccination programme for 2020 (2:52)
Issues with supply (3:51)
Staff anxieties (4:11)
Flu targets and the eligibility criteria (4:32)
Current guidance (5:49)
Vaccine demand (6:13)
Is there anything we can be doing now to boost our supply? (9:12)
Vaccination storage (9:31)
Mutual aid (10:09)
PPE (11:06)
Debating the use of PPE and advice on maintaining stock (13:24)
How will administration of the vaccines work in practice? (14:53)
Are there benefits to non-clinical staff being trained in vaccine administration? (18:01)
Medico-legal implications (18:45)
Car park clinics and drive throughs (20:20)
Practice versus PCN delivery models (21:44)
Data collection and recording information (23:12)
Final thoughts (25:27)
This episode of the podcast is a joint collaboration between Ockham Healthcare and Practice Index and we’d love to get your thoughts and feedback! To get in touch you can email Ben via ben@ockham.healthcare or James Dillon via james.dillon@practiceindex.co.uk
1 Comment
Re flu planning, useful to hear from other practices with similar but different issues. We are practices in london, we dont have extra space generally but one practice might try and waiting room clinic as they have a larger space. Generally though, we are not going to do any mass just flu vaccination clinics this year. We are going to have all as planned appointments with the right clinician – trying to work through different cohorts of patients and match them to the right person so they can get ALL F2F checks done with their flu jab. In my practice of 7,000 we are planning this as 2 hours per clinician per week – but we have a relatively low elderly population, and higher numbers of under 65 at risk. E.g for T2DM we have already completed checks on higher risk patients, and we deferred all well controlled patients till flu season so they will get diabetic check plus flu vaccine. Patients who just need a flu jab plus BP will see trained receptionist – we have been given guidance re required training, and are trying to address how the face to face element of this is delivered safely. Ardens have produced some useful searches which help with this planning, but it is not impossible to write this yourself, just think about different cohorts of patients. We record using protocol which means auto adds batch number in use, check if patient needs pneumonic – means clinician records correctly with a few clicks so not difficult or time consuming and the right code and batch number. Again fairly easy to write a protocol in emis, Ardens have done one as well.
Thanks for your newsletter, some good ideas always
Emma