It Takes the Whole Team: Staff Roles in ImmunizationWelcome to Immu-News, the Immunization Initiatives listserv, a monthly resource for the community of participants in this project.Our topic for the month is It Takes the Whole Team: Staff Roles in Immunization. As you know, we’ve been calling each of the Project clinics over the last months and wanted to share with you some interesting ideas about who plays what part in immunization at our clinics.Of course, we all think immediately about the providers and nurses, the people most likely to administer the vaccines. But who orders the vaccines, who checks the supplies, who keeps the logs, who books the appointments, who enters the data, who tracks it, and who encourages the clients to come in to the clinic to get the shot?It could be at some clinics that one or two people do most or all of these jobs, while at other clinics, they may be divided up among three or four or more people. What works at your clinic and why? Does the hand that gives the shot know what the other hands are doing? How is recording and tracking immunization data a team effort? How can the receptionist, the billing clerk, and the outreach worker all be a crucial part of the picture?Read on for information about the following:
- Experience: A checklist of all the different tasks necessary to arrive at your clinic’s immunization goals, gathered from our recent phone calls to you.
- Research: the collaborative approach--how successful are systems that incorporate the receptionist or the outreach worker into the immunization goals of the clinic?