Introduction: The significance of applying a full-inoculation program from health-care professionals leads to a substantial decrease in the morbidity rate of infectious diseases between patients and employees. The immunization guidelines of the Advisory Committee on Ιmmunization Practices (ACIP) for health-care professionals should most certainly be taken into consideration, in an attempt to develop and implement an inoculation protocol in all health services.
Purpose : The aim of the present study was to record and evaluate inoculation rates of health-care professionals at the General Hospital of Korinth.
Method and material: This study was a descriptive, cohort study of correlation. The participants of the study were 213 health-care professionals in the General Hospital of Korinth. The data collection was based on an anonymous questionnaire drawn for the purpose of the particular research according to the bibliographic references and the inoculation recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The statistical analysis was conducted using the statistical program SPSS 13. The self-coherence reliability of the study was tested on the coefficient alfa (Cronbach’s a), which was equal to 0,71.
Results: The participants who finally answered the questionnaire were 138 doctors (64%) and 75 nurses (36%). Only 1,7% of all the participants mentioned that they had not been vaccinated against any of the five vaccines which are recommended by the ACIP, whereas 20,8% of them had been fully vaccinated. The vaccines with the higher frequency rate among health-care professionals’ inoculation, were Tetanus 60%, Hepatitis B 55,8% and Hepatitis A 15,7%. Regarding to gender, men reported that they had been inoculated more frequently than women health-care professionals, with a higher statistical significant difference p<0.01 being observed in Tetanus inoculation. In regard to occupation, doctors were more frequently inoculated than Nurses (28.3% vs. 16.7%), with a higher statistical significant difference being observed in Hepatitis B (64.1% vs. 40.5%) and Tetanus inoculation (67.9% vs. 45.2%), p<0.05. Conclusions: According to our findings there is a poor protection of the health-care professionals, as far as inoculation is concerned. Approximately two out of three health care professionals are partially inoculated whereas one out of five is fully inoculated. The age of the participants did not affect the inoculation status while male sex appears to have a higher inoculation rate. The continuous training and broadening of the knowledge spectrum of all health-care professionals will most certainly lead to a more systematic inoculation, aiming at the reduction of the infectious disease rate between doctors / nursing staff and in-patients.