Vaccinations among medical and nursing students: Coverage and opportunities

• Healthcare students should comply with the same immunization recommendations that all other healthcare workers.
• Healthcare students have insufficient vaccine coverage rates.
• Healthcare students have a poor knowledge of vaccinations.
• Vaccination should be promoted during the training period in hospitals and in universities.

Healthcare students are a specific subgroup of healthcare workers as they are often not identified by the occupational medicine systems in healthcare facilities, because of their shared time between hospital wards and universities. Nevertheless, they should comply with the same vaccination recommendations as employed healthcare workers because they are in close and repeated contact with patients. Occupational immunization recommendations may vary between countries, but always include vaccine-preventable diseases that might lead to nosocomial outbeaks and/or fatal outcomes for healthcare workers or patients. Studies conclude that vaccine coverage is too low in healthcare students, and that they are often not aware of their possibility to be vectors of infections to frail patients. Efforts should be made to educate medical and nursing students on vaccines, to convince them of the utility of immunization and to offer them an increased access to occupational vaccinations in hospitals and universities.