TY - JOUR AU - Dolan, Gayle AU - Harris, Rebecca AU - Clarkson, Mandy AU - Sokal, Rachel AU - Morgan, Gemma AU - Mukaigawara, Mitsuru AU - Horiuchi, Hiroshi AU - Hale, Rachel AU - Stormont, Laura AU - Béchard-Evans, Laura AU - Chao, Yi-Sheng AU - Eremin, Sergey AU - Martins, Sara AU - Tam, John AU - Peñalver, Javier AU - Zanuzdana, Arina AU - Nguyen-Van-Tam, Jonathan T1 - Vaccination of Health Care Workers to Protect Patients at Increased Risk for Acute Respiratory Disease T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2012 VL - 18 IS - 8 SP - 1225 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Health care workers (HCWs) may transmit respiratory infection to patients. We assessed evidence for the effectiveness of vaccinating HCWs to provide indirect protection for patients at risk for severe or complicated disease after acute respiratory infection. We searched electronic health care databases and sources of gray literature by using a predefined strategy. Risk for bias was assessed by using validated tools, and results were synthesized by using a narrative approach. Seventeen of the 12,352 identified citations met the full inclusion criteria, and 3 additional articles were identified from reference or citation tracking. All considered influenza vaccination of HCWs, and most were conducted in long-term residential care settings. Consistency in the direction of effect was observed across several different outcome measures, suggesting a likely protective effect for patients in residential care settings. However, evidence was insufficient for us to confidently extrapolate this to other at-risk patient groups. KW - vaccination KW - medical staff KW - influenza, human KW - transmission KW - patients KW - review, systematic KW - public health KW - influenza KW - review KW - systematic KW - viruses KW - health care workers KW - respiratory infections DO - 10.3201/eid1808.111355 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/8/11-1355_article ER - End of Reference