Recently overheard: “Oh, I never get the flu shot – I always get the flu from it!”
Also recently overheard: “I want to be careful about shaking hands – I might get swine flu!”
“Swine” flu has certainly got our attention! As schools go back in session for the fall (in this part of the world…), pandemic planning is kicking into high gear with contingency plans for school and work absences, plans for the H1N1 vaccine, and posters seemingly everywhere advising precautions to limit the spread of H1N1.
All this planning certainly makes sense, and represents, I think, a great example of coordination among different sectors of the public health community.
But do we really need to stop shaking hands?
Seasonal influenza has been with us for years – and people still mistake “flu” for vomiting and diarrhea (at least in our area!), still avoid the flu shot thinking it will give them the “flu,” and we still have unacceptably low uptake of flu shots in both the general population and among health-care workers.
Novel H1N1 seems to have people even more worried than they were with SARS (or moreso!), yet precautions for seasonal flu still get brushed off.
How to respond?
It’s easy enough to be irritated when people brush off longstanding health threats – while novel threats get all the attention and generate lots of worry. But the family doctor in me has to wonder, “Why?”
• What is it about human nature that makes the new and different seem so exciting or threatening, and the old seem blasé and routine?
• What is it about my communication with my patients that has us (my patient and me) STILL meaning different things when we talk about the “flu”?
• How do I respond to the patient who I think is mistakenly taking the “it can’t happen to me” view?
• How can I focus the worry about the “new” into energy to deal better with the “familiar?”
Swine flu is new – but new infectious outbreaks are not. SARS, a local Norovirus outbreak, community-acquired MRSA, etc, etc, etc.
Each new threat is vital to address, but maybe each new threat may help us as docs find ways to understand our patients better and find those “teachable moments” we’ve been looking for – to help motivate change in dealing with the familiar.
Seasonal flu and swine flu. How can our response to one help us respond better to the other? And how can our patient’s responses to BOTH help us understand our patients better?