Fears over training quality for aged-care COVID-19 vaccine jabbers

Medical experts are concerned that training for doctors and nurses administering COVID-19 vaccines in aged care is second-class.

A nurse receives the Pfizer vaccine at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. Picture: Tara Croser.

Medical experts are concerned that training for doctors and nurses administering COVID-19 vaccines in aged care is second-class compared to what is being carried out in hospitals.

The hospital vaccination hubs dispensing the Pfizer vaccine have been simulating its administration from multi-dose vials for weeks on top of mandatory online training for medics. Simulation training is standard for medical procedures in hospitals.

In contrast, healthcare workers delivering the vaccines in aged care have completed only an online course.

Rebecca Szabo, the lead of simulation for Melbourne Medical School, said drawing up doses of vaccine from multi-dose vials could be tricky, and it was not a procedure most practitioners were familiar with. Most vaccines are contained and administered from a single vial.

Dr Szabo questioned whether online training was adequate for mastering how to dilute and draw up vaccine doses from multi-dose vials. “To learn knowledge, and potentially be tested on what you know, is adequate,” she said. “But drawing up these multi-dose vials is really finicky. It’s not something most doctors would ever do in their normal practice.

“Almost all our vaccinations are single syringes. So these multi-dose vials are trickier. It’s slow, it needs to be done in a slightly different way than we would usually draw something.

“For healthcare education, when we’re talking about demonstrating competence in being able to do something … simulation is one tool … to test the system as to whether there are going to be issues. I’m not saying online training is inadequate, but there are issues in terms of its ability to test what happens in drawing up the vial.

“I would like to have seen that tested in the environment of an aged-care facility.”

Dosing errors similar to what occurred in Brisbane have occurred in the UK and Germany.

“If we knew about these errors overseas, was this actually tested for in terms of how we could prevent these errors happening in Australia?” Dr Szabo said.

Many hospital vaccination hubs around Australia have more rigorous procedures in place than are being followed by contracted health providers in aged care.

In some hospitals, pharmacists dilute the vaccine then draw up syringes and deliver them to the vaccinators.

AMA vice-president Chris Moy said: “I would have thought these services would have made sure that the highest levels of clinical assurance would have been carried out.”