You’ve started your course, you’ve gone to lectures and you have your uniform ready. But don’t forget the most important thing before you start your healthcare placement!
Why get vaccinated?
Getting vaccinated isn’t just about protecting yourself, it’s about keeping everyone around you safe too. There are so many reasons to get your vaccinations before starting your healthcare course. We’ve listed a few below:
1. To protect vulnerable patients and the NHS
Number 1 is a big one! Due to the nature of your roles, you will be in close contact with patients who are immunocompromised, elderly, newborn, or have chronic conditions. Vaccination helps prevent transmitting infections to these vulnerable groups. Hospitals and clinics are also high-risk environments for disease transmission. Vaccinated staff help reduce the likelihood of outbreaks, which can disrupt services and endanger lives.
2. It’s part of the requirements for your course!
When you accepted your offer at UWE Bristol, you agreed to complete your compliance checks like a DBS check and health checks. You agreed to ensure your routine immunisations such as tetanus, diphtheria, polio and MMR are all up to date. Placement providers may require proof of vaccination before students can begin clinical placements, so make sure you’re sorted and not delaying the start of your placement. Putting off vaccinations can cause mountains of work in our placement teams, industry partners, administrative staff and programme teams. We’d really appreciate you giving us a hand and get your jabs sorted early!
3. Professional responsibility
Getting vaccinated is part of our ethical duty of care. Our placement providers and healthcare partners have codes of conduct and professional standards in their commitment to public health that we are proud to align with. Our future healthcare students will all have to undertake pre-employment screening to ensure they are safe to work.
4. Protecting your own health
Unfortunately, we know that university is a hot spot for infectious diseases. If you live in halls or attend lectures, you will be around a variety of people from various corners of the UK and even further afield, which means that bugs are bound to spread. Freshers flu aside, we’ve had historic outbreaks of measles, mumps, meningitis and of course COVID-19 on campuses, as well as local outbreaks in Bristol and South Gloucestershire. So, get jabbed. We don’t want any of our students or staff getting ill unnecessarily!
5. Make the most out of freebies and convenience
We want our students to be vaccinated to ensure everyone stays safe and can continue coming to their classes, placements and place of work. We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to get all the vaccinations you need; we will tell you what you need, give them to you for free and set up clinic days on Glenside campus for you to get them administered at a time convenient to you.
If you are a UK student you can check your vaccination status online.
The age of misinformation
All up to date evidence shows us that getting a vaccination is safer than not getting a vaccination. There is a lot of misinformation online about jabs. If you have questions and want to learn more, do your research using multiple, unbiassed and reputable sources. Always get your health information from trusted sources, such as the NHS or World Health Organisation.
I’m in, what next?
If you are a healthcare student, expect to hear about your Occupational Health checks via email before you start your course. For more information, visit our webpage, or contact us. You can also check your vaccination status online.
Interested in more?
Check out our blog on how you can prepare for your healthcare placement and how to get registered at our University health centre.