The National Immunisation Office (NIO) supported four regional immunisation conferences held in February & March 2024 organised by the Professional Development Coordinators (PDCs) for Practice Nursing across the country. The conferences were held for healthcare professionals involved in the delivery of the primary childhood and other national immunisation programmes and were mainly for General practice nurses (GPNs).
The immunisation conferences were a great opportunity for the NIO to deliver up to date information, to healthcare professionals about immunisation programmes. The conferences concluded very successfully with approximately 800 participants in total. The NIO Clinical, Pharmacy and Communication teams made presentations together with the PDCs for GPNs and the local public health departments and regional HSE teams, providing up to date information on publicly funded national immunisation programmes.
The key topics covered in the conference included:
- Primary Childhood Immunisation Programme (PCIP) schedule-what‘s new?
- Catch-up vaccination
- Immunisation resources produced by the NIO
- Vaccine acceptance and vaccine hesitancy
- Vaccine storage and management
- Community vaccination services
- Vaccine preventable diseases
- Professional scope of practice and usage of medicine protocols
The NIO would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the PDCs for GPNs who organised and coordinated the four conferences, which were a great success with very positive feedback from the participants. We also would like to thank the GPNs who work so hard on the ground administering vaccines to babies, children and adults to protect them against infectious diseases throughout the life-course. The NIO is looking forward to supporting immunisation conferences in the upcoming years.