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Immunizations
Stefanie Schroeder, DO discusses the goal of vaccines and the latest vaccination schedule. She dispels myths surrounding vaccines, shares side effects, and explains where to find further information on the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Featuring:
Stefanie Schroeder, DO
Stefanie Schroeder, DO is a pediatric doctor at Carle.
Transcription:
Expert Insights is an ongoing medical education podcast. The Carle Division of Continuing Education designates that each episode of this enduring material is worth a maximum of .25 AMA PRA category 1 credit. To collect credit, please click on the link and complete the episode’s posttest.
Melanie Cole (Host): The diseases that vaccines prevent can be dangerous or even deadly. Vaccination is one of the best ways parents can protect their children from life threatening diseases. Welcome to Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. I’m Melanie Cole and today, we’re discussing immunizations. Joining me is Dr. Stefanie Schroeder. She’s a pediatrician with the Carle Foundation Hospital. Dr. Schroeder, it’s a pleasure to have you with us and this is such an important topic and especially now. So, first of all, I’d like to just have you kind of reinforce for us or reiterate the importance of vaccinations and please tell us how they come up with the vaccination schedule.
Stefanie Schroeder, DO (Guest): Yes, thank you for having me. So, vaccines are especially important in our little ones and the reason that we do so many in the beginning and what seems like so many in the beginning is because our newborns and infants, their immune systems haven’t seen these particular diseases and we want to make sure that if for some reason they become exposed, that their body can say oh, I know exactly what this is and I can fight it off. Vaccine preventable illnesses that we see, we’ve looked at how serious and how deadly those can be for our infants and that’s one of the reasons why we have everything it seems like so frontloaded.
Host: That’s true. And it is so important and even now. So, stress for us the importance right now because there are many parents that are skipping their annual well visits with children because they are afraid of this pandemic and coming in, but vaccinations are even more important right now. So speak about that a little bit and the safety precautions that you’re taking for parents that do need to come in to get their children vaccinated.
Dr. Schroeder: For our group, in the height of our quarantine; which was March, April, May time; what we ended up doing was we decided who absolutely had to be seen by a provider and who could be seen for just a nurse visit for their vaccines. And then have a follow up phone call with a provider. And I was actually one of the providers working from home doing those phone follow up visits and I had a mom tell me that it was fantastic. She was in and out with that nurse visit in five minutes, so she did not feel like she was overexposed at all with her child.
We did still try to stress to parents that it is still very important that we try to stick to the schedule as closely as possible because the vaccines do help prevent these illnesses in the long run but if you have a large group of people say who decide that they don’t want to do like the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine; then you can run the potential of having like a little outbreak of that particular illness and the last thing that we need is an outbreak of chickenpox or measles or polio in addition to this COVID-19 pandemic.
Host: Well that’s certainly true. So, well visits must be in person because of vaccines. Are you still doing Televisits as well for parents that maybe have questions about vaccinations right now and the safety protocols you have in place?
Dr. Schroeder: So, right now, we have started to see everyone in the office. We have slowly transitioned from those Televisits to seeing people in the office. But the safety precautions that we are taking is we are making sure that everyone gets put in the room quickly and we are making sure that we clean the rooms extremely thoroughly in between patients and we’re also cleaning the lobby very closely. We want to make sure that we don’t let our patients sit out in the lobby for too long so that’s why we’re trying to stay on top of it as quickly as we can. I’m sure that if parents felt extremely uncomfortable about it, we certainly could do a Televisit. But we do also enjoy seeing those patients face to face. We’re trying to keep our visits as snappy as possible, trying to get you in and out as best we can while still making sure we answer all their questions.
Host: And Dr. Schroeder, with this pandemic and so much uncertainty and these unprecedented times; as our teens are probably going to head off to college, what about vaccinations for them? Do they still get vaccinations after the age of 17 or so and if they do, what are those?
Dr. Schroeder: The last couple of vaccines in that particular age group; at sixteen or later they are going to get their second meningitis vaccine. It’s usually 16 or before their senior year of high school. So, they definitely need to get that done. Colleges are going to require that they have that one. And then the next one actually isn’t really scheduled until they turn about 21 when they need another tetanus.
Host: Wow. That’s great information. Thank you. And for parents that are wondering about the schedule or that ask you questions about alternate scheduling; tell them the importance of maintaining that schedule and why it’s set up the way it is.
Dr. Schroeder: So, I do my best to try to work with some families especially if they decide that they want to do a different schedule. I am of the opinion better some than none. So, I’ll work with them on coming up with something that they are comfortable with. But most of our families, they cooperate with the schedule that we have. The families that maybe struggle a little bit, we will kind of go over the fact that their infants have these new immune systems and we want to make sure that they are prepared and sometimes if they are vaccine hesitant, talking to them about their questions and concerns can certainly help them decide that yes, they do want to go ahead and do the vaccines. Other times, you have to kind of agree to disagree and readdress the question at the next visit. I try to keep a good relationship with all of my families and it’s especially important in the ones who decide that they want to do something different with vaccines. You want to be able to build that trust.
Host: Well that’s so important for patients to be able to trust their providers and Dr. Schroeder, as if it isn’t enough that we’ve got this global pandemic; we’re coming up on flu season. Speak about the flu shot and really tell us about herd immunity because we’re hearing that a lot as well and so kind of put that together for us and inform the listeners of why it’s so important to maintain our flu shots as well.
Dr. Schroeder: Yes, it’s incredibly important especially in this time of COVID that everyone who is able to, so those include patients six months of age and older to get their flu vaccine. Now your pediatrician is probably going to start talking to you about flu vaccines probably end of August, beginning of September. That’s usually about the time we get them in the office. And for any infant or persons under the age of I believe it’s eight who has not had a flu vaccine before; they’ll need two doses of the flu shot in the same season. Now your doctor of course is going to talk to you about it. but it’s going to be extremely important to help prevent a huge number of patients with the flu as well because that can also add to the hospital burden. But you asked about herd immunity. So, if we vaccinate all of our healthy people, so all of the people who can get it six months and older; they will help protect those of our community who cannot get the flu vaccine. So, we’re looking at those who for some reason are immunocompromised, they are undergoing chemotherapy, or they’ve had an organ transplant, or they are on a medication that makes them immune suppressed and for some reason they are at a higher risk of getting sick. So, if all the people around them have been vaccinated against this illness; then they are going to be less likely to come in contact with it because their group, their herd is protected from it. and then that in turn protects those people who can’t get the vaccine.
Host: Well that’s very true. And what do you hear from parents Dr. Schroeder, most often in regards to vaccines and specifically right now with the Corona pandemic? What are you hearing from parents?
Dr. Schroeder: So, when we were doing more of our Televisits, we did have a lot of patients who were initially concerned about potentially doing something a little bit different with the vaccine schedule. Some of the vaccines we’ve encourage them it’s okay if they wait a little bit longer to get this vaccine specifically their hepatitis A vaccines which are not required for school at this time. And that it’s okay for them to wait a little bit but for this period of time, the risk of getting exposed to COVID can outweigh the benefits of the hepatitis A vaccine. But we’ve had a lot of parents that still want to stay on that normal schedule and so we are still seeing lots of well babies. We’re getting caught up with the ones that we maybe needed to push back a little bit. But overall, for the most part, all of our parents are complying and coming in and getting all the vaccines that they need. I think they can tell that it’s really important that they try to keep their babies healthy from all of the normal stuff that we protect them against.
Host: Absolutely. As we wrap up Dr. Schroeder, please reiterate the importance of vaccines, speaking with our pediatricians to make sure our kids are up to date and get them in and not to skip those well visits. Kind of wrap it all up for us with the importance and where we can find further information.
Dr. Schroeder: Of course. It’s so important to make sure that we’re seeing all these babies, not necessarily just for their milestones and making sure they are growing well but to make sure we keep them up to date on the vaccines. Like I said earlier, we don’t want little pockets of outbreaks of other illnesses that could have been prevented with these vaccines. And if you take proper care, you can certainly get those kids in and out in just a few minutes and we can keep them happy and healthy. If you need further instructions of course, looking at the CDC.gov website. I look at that all the time during flu season just to kind of reiterate the dosing.
Host: Such great information and so important for other providers to hear right now so that they could give good counsel to their patients. Thank you again Dr. Schroeder for joining us. That concludes this episode of Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. For a listing of Carle providers and to view Carle sponsored educational activities, please visit our website at www.carleconnect.com for more information. We hope the information gained will be applicable to your work and life. And if you found this podcast informative, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other interesting podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.
Expert Insights is an ongoing medical education podcast. The Carle Division of Continuing Education designates that each episode of this enduring material is worth a maximum of .25 AMA PRA category 1 credit. To collect credit, please click on the link and complete the episode’s posttest.
Melanie Cole (Host): The diseases that vaccines prevent can be dangerous or even deadly. Vaccination is one of the best ways parents can protect their children from life threatening diseases. Welcome to Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. I’m Melanie Cole and today, we’re discussing immunizations. Joining me is Dr. Stefanie Schroeder. She’s a pediatrician with the Carle Foundation Hospital. Dr. Schroeder, it’s a pleasure to have you with us and this is such an important topic and especially now. So, first of all, I’d like to just have you kind of reinforce for us or reiterate the importance of vaccinations and please tell us how they come up with the vaccination schedule.
Stefanie Schroeder, DO (Guest): Yes, thank you for having me. So, vaccines are especially important in our little ones and the reason that we do so many in the beginning and what seems like so many in the beginning is because our newborns and infants, their immune systems haven’t seen these particular diseases and we want to make sure that if for some reason they become exposed, that their body can say oh, I know exactly what this is and I can fight it off. Vaccine preventable illnesses that we see, we’ve looked at how serious and how deadly those can be for our infants and that’s one of the reasons why we have everything it seems like so frontloaded.
Host: That’s true. And it is so important and even now. So, stress for us the importance right now because there are many parents that are skipping their annual well visits with children because they are afraid of this pandemic and coming in, but vaccinations are even more important right now. So speak about that a little bit and the safety precautions that you’re taking for parents that do need to come in to get their children vaccinated.
Dr. Schroeder: For our group, in the height of our quarantine; which was March, April, May time; what we ended up doing was we decided who absolutely had to be seen by a provider and who could be seen for just a nurse visit for their vaccines. And then have a follow up phone call with a provider. And I was actually one of the providers working from home doing those phone follow up visits and I had a mom tell me that it was fantastic. She was in and out with that nurse visit in five minutes, so she did not feel like she was overexposed at all with her child.
We did still try to stress to parents that it is still very important that we try to stick to the schedule as closely as possible because the vaccines do help prevent these illnesses in the long run but if you have a large group of people say who decide that they don’t want to do like the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine; then you can run the potential of having like a little outbreak of that particular illness and the last thing that we need is an outbreak of chickenpox or measles or polio in addition to this COVID-19 pandemic.
Host: Well that’s certainly true. So, well visits must be in person because of vaccines. Are you still doing Televisits as well for parents that maybe have questions about vaccinations right now and the safety protocols you have in place?
Dr. Schroeder: So, right now, we have started to see everyone in the office. We have slowly transitioned from those Televisits to seeing people in the office. But the safety precautions that we are taking is we are making sure that everyone gets put in the room quickly and we are making sure that we clean the rooms extremely thoroughly in between patients and we’re also cleaning the lobby very closely. We want to make sure that we don’t let our patients sit out in the lobby for too long so that’s why we’re trying to stay on top of it as quickly as we can. I’m sure that if parents felt extremely uncomfortable about it, we certainly could do a Televisit. But we do also enjoy seeing those patients face to face. We’re trying to keep our visits as snappy as possible, trying to get you in and out as best we can while still making sure we answer all their questions.
Host: And Dr. Schroeder, with this pandemic and so much uncertainty and these unprecedented times; as our teens are probably going to head off to college, what about vaccinations for them? Do they still get vaccinations after the age of 17 or so and if they do, what are those?
Dr. Schroeder: The last couple of vaccines in that particular age group; at sixteen or later they are going to get their second meningitis vaccine. It’s usually 16 or before their senior year of high school. So, they definitely need to get that done. Colleges are going to require that they have that one. And then the next one actually isn’t really scheduled until they turn about 21 when they need another tetanus.
Host: Wow. That’s great information. Thank you. And for parents that are wondering about the schedule or that ask you questions about alternate scheduling; tell them the importance of maintaining that schedule and why it’s set up the way it is.
Dr. Schroeder: So, I do my best to try to work with some families especially if they decide that they want to do a different schedule. I am of the opinion better some than none. So, I’ll work with them on coming up with something that they are comfortable with. But most of our families, they cooperate with the schedule that we have. The families that maybe struggle a little bit, we will kind of go over the fact that their infants have these new immune systems and we want to make sure that they are prepared and sometimes if they are vaccine hesitant, talking to them about their questions and concerns can certainly help them decide that yes, they do want to go ahead and do the vaccines. Other times, you have to kind of agree to disagree and readdress the question at the next visit. I try to keep a good relationship with all of my families and it’s especially important in the ones who decide that they want to do something different with vaccines. You want to be able to build that trust.
Host: Well that’s so important for patients to be able to trust their providers and Dr. Schroeder, as if it isn’t enough that we’ve got this global pandemic; we’re coming up on flu season. Speak about the flu shot and really tell us about herd immunity because we’re hearing that a lot as well and so kind of put that together for us and inform the listeners of why it’s so important to maintain our flu shots as well.
Dr. Schroeder: Yes, it’s incredibly important especially in this time of COVID that everyone who is able to, so those include patients six months of age and older to get their flu vaccine. Now your pediatrician is probably going to start talking to you about flu vaccines probably end of August, beginning of September. That’s usually about the time we get them in the office. And for any infant or persons under the age of I believe it’s eight who has not had a flu vaccine before; they’ll need two doses of the flu shot in the same season. Now your doctor of course is going to talk to you about it. but it’s going to be extremely important to help prevent a huge number of patients with the flu as well because that can also add to the hospital burden. But you asked about herd immunity. So, if we vaccinate all of our healthy people, so all of the people who can get it six months and older; they will help protect those of our community who cannot get the flu vaccine. So, we’re looking at those who for some reason are immunocompromised, they are undergoing chemotherapy, or they’ve had an organ transplant, or they are on a medication that makes them immune suppressed and for some reason they are at a higher risk of getting sick. So, if all the people around them have been vaccinated against this illness; then they are going to be less likely to come in contact with it because their group, their herd is protected from it. and then that in turn protects those people who can’t get the vaccine.
Host: Well that’s very true. And what do you hear from parents Dr. Schroeder, most often in regards to vaccines and specifically right now with the Corona pandemic? What are you hearing from parents?
Dr. Schroeder: So, when we were doing more of our Televisits, we did have a lot of patients who were initially concerned about potentially doing something a little bit different with the vaccine schedule. Some of the vaccines we’ve encourage them it’s okay if they wait a little bit longer to get this vaccine specifically their hepatitis A vaccines which are not required for school at this time. And that it’s okay for them to wait a little bit but for this period of time, the risk of getting exposed to COVID can outweigh the benefits of the hepatitis A vaccine. But we’ve had a lot of parents that still want to stay on that normal schedule and so we are still seeing lots of well babies. We’re getting caught up with the ones that we maybe needed to push back a little bit. But overall, for the most part, all of our parents are complying and coming in and getting all the vaccines that they need. I think they can tell that it’s really important that they try to keep their babies healthy from all of the normal stuff that we protect them against.
Host: Absolutely. As we wrap up Dr. Schroeder, please reiterate the importance of vaccines, speaking with our pediatricians to make sure our kids are up to date and get them in and not to skip those well visits. Kind of wrap it all up for us with the importance and where we can find further information.
Dr. Schroeder: Of course. It’s so important to make sure that we’re seeing all these babies, not necessarily just for their milestones and making sure they are growing well but to make sure we keep them up to date on the vaccines. Like I said earlier, we don’t want little pockets of outbreaks of other illnesses that could have been prevented with these vaccines. And if you take proper care, you can certainly get those kids in and out in just a few minutes and we can keep them happy and healthy. If you need further instructions of course, looking at the CDC.gov website. I look at that all the time during flu season just to kind of reiterate the dosing.
Host: Such great information and so important for other providers to hear right now so that they could give good counsel to their patients. Thank you again Dr. Schroeder for joining us. That concludes this episode of Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. For a listing of Carle providers and to view Carle sponsored educational activities, please visit our website at www.carleconnect.com for more information. We hope the information gained will be applicable to your work and life. And if you found this podcast informative, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other interesting podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.