Vaccination staff at risk of burnout

A vaccination centre may have to cut the number of days it operates unless it gets more vaccinators.

Each nurse at the O¯ tara site in Auckland is delivering about 100 injections a day at the centre which runs seven days a week. Those in charge said they urgently need more vaccinators to prevent nurses getting exhausted.

South Seas Health Care chief executive Lemalu Silao Vaisola-Sefo, who runs the centre with a group of Pacific providers, said they were set up to reach about 300 people a day. But most days they were vaccinating nearly 400, with about four nurses.

The staff were coping thanks to the great support they gave each other but, unless they got help soon, something would have to change, he said. One option was to stop running every day.

At the moment the centre was promised new vaccinators for July when the rollout was really due to get cranking.

But they needed them sooner and could do even more vaccinations if they had them, Vaisola-Sefo said.

‘‘There’s energy from the community now to come forward, so we’ve got to meet that; otherwise, we’ll almost have to have another campaign later in the year.’’

They were waiting for the so-called non-regulated vaccinators, people from nonmedical backgrounds, who were being trained.

The Ministry of Health said a pilot training programme for the non-regulated vaccinators was due to start, with most set to be trained in June, ready for the second half of the year when they were most needed.