Public health nurses in rural communities immunize during influenza pandemics: what meanings do they attach to the experience?

Abstract

The H1N1 influenza pandemic (pH1N1) in 2009 was the first opportunity in history to administer vaccine on a grand scale. In Alberta, Canada public health nurses (PHNs) were the primary administrators of pandemic vaccine through mass immunization clinics. This paper describes what the experience of immunizing in mass clinics during pH1N1 was like for rural PHNs in Alberta. Five rural PHNs, all female, two being residents of the communities in which they immunized, and all of them knowing community members that presented to the mass clinics, participated in an interpretive phenomenological study of the meanings they attached to their lived experience. Five meanings are revealed that rural PHNs attach to their pandemic immunization experience: unpreparedness, urbancentrism, mistrust, personal growth, and moral distress. The interpretation of these meanings is that rural PHNs were often caught between a rock and hard place as they lived their experience.