Abstract:

Objective: Influenza is a major health problem worldwide. Healthcare workers are at increased risk of contracting influenza and spread the disease to their patients and family members. Influenza vaccination is an important public health preventive action to stop the transmission of the disease. However, the uptake remains low due to doubt in the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine the effectiveness of influenza vaccination in reducing influenza-related work absenteeism among HCWs in Malaysia.

Study Design: This is a cross-sectional study.

Methods: The study was conducted at two specialist hospitals in Perak, involved 774 nurses and assistant medical officers who were selected using multistage random sampling. It used a self-administered questionnaire that contained a section on sociodemographic characteristics, and numbers of influenza-related sick leaves in the year of 2017. The influenza vaccination uptake was based on immunization record for the period between 1^st November 2016 and 31^st December 2016.

Results: The result shows the non-vaccinated HCWs reported more often influenza-related sick leave (18.1%, mean 0.39 ±1.03) than by vaccinated HCWs (16.2%, mean 0.27 ± 0.75), although the difference was found to not be statistically significant (p=0.388). However, notably, the total number of workdays lost due to influenza among non-vaccinated HCWs was 1.44 times higher than that among the vaccinated group in the studied hospitals.

Conclusions: These findings could motivate policy makers to strengthen the implementation of an influenza vaccination programme among HCWs and to encourage HCWs to be immunized against influenza.

Keywords: absenteeism, effectiveness, healthcare worker, hospital, influenza, vaccination.

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