Religion tops list of reasons HCWs request flu vaccine exemption
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Approved influenza vaccination exemption requests increased significantly over 3 years among health care personnel at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, according to study findings published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
Most requests — four out of every five — “were explicitly religious in nature,” researchers reported.
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“Our experience with the development and implementation of a process to review health care personnel requests for exemption from our institutional influenza vaccination requirement results in some rich and robust learnings,” Tom Talbot, MD, MPH, professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and chief hospital epidemiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Healio.
“As we looked in the literature, we could not find many studies that provided a comprehensive review of the exemption review process, its development and the complex reasons that health care personnel (HCP) claimed for such exemptions,” Talbot said. “It was our hope that sharing our experience could help other institutions who may be struggling with how to evaluate these exemption requests.”
Talbot and colleagues analyzed all personal and religious exemption requests at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) for three consecutive influenza seasons between 2015 and 2018. According to the study, the researchers categorized the requests by one of 12 standardized employee categories and one of 18 unique reasons for vaccine exemption.
The study demonstrated that among the three influenza seasons, 1.1% to 2.1% of all VUMC HCP requested religious or personal exemption from vaccination. According to the study, the frequency of religious and personal exemption approval increased annually from 65.5% to 80.2% to 87.6% over the three seasons.
The researcher said the five most commonly stated reasons for not getting vaccinated were religious in nature, with the most common being that the “body is a temple or sacred.” These requests were most often submitted by nonclinical staff.
“While the proportion of health care workers who request a religious or personal belief exemption from an employer influenza vaccination mandate is very low, a multidisciplinary process to review such requests in a fair and consistent manner is important,” Talbot said.
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