Clinical Scenarios for Immunizations

In Pediatrics, I saw a mother who had a 2 year old daughter who was unimmunized.

"Now that she's two and out of the danger zone for autism... I'd like to start some vaccines," she said.

My preceptor and I spent the next ten minutes negotiating with her -- a major worry being "overwhelming" the child with dangerous chemicals. We settled on the DTaP and VZV vaccine after she made a few requests to "split up the components."

I did not understand some of her worries... and I'm not entirely convinced that she understood either. She was just worried. We emphasized that she avoid ALL travel and exposure to anyone who did travel around her child to avoid any avoidable illnesses.

So it's fitting that I found this series of Clinical Scenarios for vaccination at Immunizationed.org, featuring the following topics:

Adolescent Immunization
Chronic Liver Disease
Health Care Workers
Human Papilloma Virus
- Pre-adolescent female vaccination
- 23 year old female with abnormal pap
Pneumococcal Pneumonia
Shingles and Post Herpetic Neuralgia

It's a shame that they do not provide a script for addressing the "anti-vaccine" crowd, with ready statistics and concerns for public health and preserving herd immunity. It will be one of my goals to be capable of solidly addressing this topic in a manner satisfying to my hypervigilant mothers and autism-wary parents in pediatrics.