Physicians struggle when immunizations get off-track

Vaccine registries and good software could help doctors with the complex task of catching up on young patients' missed shots.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. June 30, 2003.

Washington -- Although vaccines are a tremendous boon to the public's health, they can create major headaches for physicians trying to get young patients back on course to complete complex immunization schedules after they have strayed.

The majority of physicians surveyed by researchers from the University of Chicago readily acknowledged that crafting adequate catch-up regimens for children is difficult.

And their responses to a test of their knowledge on the subject indicated that they weren't doing such a great job when they did tackle it.

Nearly two-thirds of the 550 pediatricians, family physicians and other primary care doctors who completed surveys sent to them in June 2001 failed to answer correctly any of the questions concerning hypothetical catch-up scenarios.

Only 20% of the doctors responded correctly to four or more of the six scenarios.

"The results show very clearly there is a major problem that hasn't been recognized before, or if it has been recognized, it hasn't received enough attention," said Robert Daum, MD, who designed the scenarios for the study, which was published in the May issue of Pediatrics.

Dr. Daum, director of the University of Chicago's Pediatric Immunization Program, began to suspect there was a problem with catch-up regimens as he worked with the Chicago Housing Authority to identify children in need of vaccinations following an outbreak of measles and pertussis about 10 years ago.