Survey: During a pandemic, many healthcare workers would stay home

More than two out of every five public healthcare workers would not show up for work during a flu pandemic, according to a survey conducted by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. The researchers reported that the perceived risk among public health workers was associated with a lack of education and training about the threat of pandemic flu.

"Forty-two percent of the healthcare workers surveyed said they would not respond in the event of a flu pandemic," said study co-author Dr. Daniel J. Barnett, an instructor at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Public Health Preparedness, according to an April 18 report from HealthDay News. "The most important factor, in terms of showing up for work, was how [important] the individual employee perceived his or her role [to be] in the agency's response," he said. Clerical and support workers were least likely to believe they would report for work, he said.

The researchers polled 308 public health employees, between March 2005 and July 2005, at three Maryland county health departments. The researchers state in their abstract, published April 18 in the public access journal BMC Public Health, that "the knowledge gaps identified serve as barriers to pandemic influenza response and must be specifically addressed to enable effective local public health response to this significant threat."

See the research article at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/6/99