Improving Influenza Vaccination Rates Among Health Care Professionals

A Novel Approach To Improve Influenza Vaccination Rates Among Health Care Professionals: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

The purpose of this study was to see if reminder letters and a large raffle prize would encourage health care workers to receive influenza vaccinations.

Eight hundred employees of an urban tertiary care hospital, 200 each from the following four categories: professional staff, resident physicians, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses comprised the study group. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive: 1) no intervention, 2) a reminder letter for flu vaccine, 3) a raffle ticket to win a free Caribbean vacation with flu vaccine administration, or 4) both the reminder letter and raffle ticket. We compared the proportion of employees receiving vaccination and participating in the raffle across groups.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Hospital employees, staff physicians, residents, rn's, lpn's

Exclusion Criteria:

• non patient care hospital employees