Guidance
This guideline covers how to increase uptake of the free flu vaccination among people who are eligible. It describes ways to increase awareness and how to use all opportunities in primary and secondary care to identify people who should be encouraged to have the vaccination.
The recommendations in this guideline should be read together with the NICE guideline on vaccine uptake in the general population.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- using a multicomponent approach
- raising awareness
- offering vaccination
- increasing uptake among eligible groups in primary and secondary care
- audit, monitoring and feedback
- vaccination in carers
- increasing uptake in health and social care staff
Who is it for?
- Commissioners and providers of primary and secondary healthcare services, including maternity providers and community pharmacies
- All employers of staff who provide NHS or social-care funded services (including maternity care, domiciliary care and care homes)
- Local authorities, and community and voluntary sector organisations that employ health and social care workers
- Occupational health services and infection prevention and control teams
- NHS England teams and Health Education England teams
- People using services, their families, carers and other members of the public, in particular those eligible for flu vaccination
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
NICE worked with Public Health England to develop this guidance.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.