Could Drive-Through Flu Jabs Be the Future?

 by Saanvi Ganesh

COVID 19 has placed an immense number of restrictions on people’s everyday life and as we enter a fresh lockdown, with cases rising and more people admitted in hospitals, we wonder how hospitals have been coping with what was once normal appointments like getting flu jabs? Vulnerable people require these yearly vaccinations in order to prevent them getting dangerously ill; they cannot go into hospitals because of the risk of catching coronavirus, or both which could potentially be fatal. So how could they get the flu jabs they desperately need at a pressing time?

 

Fareham Community Hospital and a few other places had the genius solution of the UK’s first drive through flu jab centres. They provided minimal contact with other people, reducing the risk of spreading and/or catching COVID 19 while still allowing the patients to get the protection the need. It also provided some excitement after the dull days of shielding or isolating.

 

With the help of a team of volunteers, the program seemed to run smoothly; clients seemed to prefer the experience to previous flu jab experiences. I had the amazing opportunity to volunteer at the centre at Fareham Community Hospital, and I enjoyed the process of speaking to so many people after months of lockdown.

  

The set up was a one-way system, with four vaccination stations, so clients were given jabs in batches of four, and three volunteer stations, guiding the cars through. Originally the system made use of the whole car park at the hospital, but this meant that many of the clients didn’t go fully round the roundabout and cut through it. One of the volunteers, who was a former driving instructor, was frustrated to the core by this (with me having to hear the rants each week when partnered up with her). The next day, the system was changed so that the drivers were forced to go the correct way over the roundabout.

 

My roles were to hand out leaflets at the end station and check that the patients were ok, which they mostly were, and at other stations in the coming weeks checking for paperwork and guiding the cars through the area. My role on the last week was also to take maternity patients through into the hospital for their appointments.

 

I was surprised at the number of volunteers that were required to run the operation smoothly and learned there was a lot of communication involved between the volunteers and between patients and volunteers - the number of times patients were stopped for paperwork and information must have been exhausting for the clients.

 

I observed that there were teams of nurses and doctors at each flu jab station and the jab took a few minutes involving all the forms and questions asked by the nurses. When there was more than one person getting a jab in one car, I saw that both the doctors and nurses administered them at the same time and one helped the other once they were finished.

 

I noticed how Nick, one of the organisers, kept morale up within the team of volunteers by constantly going around and visiting each station and chatting to the person there if the number of cars was low. He also moved the volunteers around so that we would not get bored doing just one job. The volunteers also had walkie talkies so we could communicate to the team whether the clients had paperwork or if they or we needed anything, which I thought was good as there was quite a lot of distance between the stations.

 

Being on the final station, gave me an opportunity to hear the clients’ feedback on the whole system and I have to say most of the clients came out of it extremely jolly compared to how they came in, excellent customer service I would say. All of the clients seemed happy with the process, with a few people suggesting it should be run like this every time.

 

So perhaps this could be how flu jabs are run in the future. It would certainly save a lot of time and allow doctors to focus on other cases.