Why is it that health-care workers around the world prove so hard to vaccinate against influenza or other communicable diseases? Rates of influenza vaccination in health-care workers have averaged well under 50% for the past decade in many hospitals and long-term care facilities in the USA and in other nations. What should be done about this dismal state of affairs? Will redoubling efforts at voluntary vaccination work? That seems unlikely. This low uptake of vaccination in health-care workers does not seem to be the result of a failure to push from administrators and government authorities. Nor are the culprits a lack of vaccines or money to pay for them. The call for those who care for others to get vaccinated both for their own protection and that of their patients has been issued year after year. All manner of efforts have been made to make vaccination in the workplace easy to do, ranging from bringing carts with vaccine directly on to hospital floors, posters, webcasts, jamborees, and various incentive schemes. None of these approaches have succeeded in getting rates up to where they need to be to protect the workforce and patients.
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