Is Any of Your Vaccines Out of Refrigerator? Do These Things

Vaccines are delicate and temperature-sensitive items. They remain potent and effective only when healthcare facilities store them in the right temperature environment.

If the temperature goes out of the prescribed range, vaccines can get damaged and become unfit for administration.

What are Vaccines?

Vaccines protect people against many diseases by providing long-lasting immunity. Vaccines introduce foreign antigens into a person's immune system to set off an immune response to the virus. In most vaccines, weak antigens are present, and despite being weak, they can stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies to enable a person to develop immunity.

How to Store Vaccines?

Vaccines are delicate biological products that are sensitive to light and temperature. If vaccines get exposed to an inappropriate environment, they will lose potency and get damaged.

As healthcare providers cannot administer damaged vaccines to people, they have to dispose of them and subsequently replenish the damaged vaccine stock, incurring monetary losses.

To avoid damages to vaccines, proper storage facilities are necessary. A cold chain plays an important role in keeping vaccines in the right temperature environment. You can regard it as a temperature-controlled supply chain.

Keeping vaccines at the right temperature environment starts right at the manufacturing facilities and extends to the healthcare facility throughout the transportation and delivery phases.

Once vaccines get delivered to a healthcare facility, the staff should ensure proper vaccine storage management. They should keep the vaccines in medical freezers that can provide the right temperature environment. For storing specialized vaccines, such as COVID19 vaccines, healthcare facilities must invest in an ultra-low temperature freezer.

It is needless to say that to err is human. Mistakes can occur in healthcare facilities while handling and storing vaccines.

In a busy healthcare facility, the staff has to juggle multiple tasks. At times, it might so happen that a staff member can wrongfully leave a vaccine on a countertop instead of putting it inside a medical refrigerator. Such eventualities, called temperature excursion events, can damage a vaccine.

Temperature excursion events occur when vaccines get exposed to outside the prescribed temperature ranges.

A damaged vaccine can be harmful to both the patient and the healthcare facility. If a patient gets administered a damaged vaccine, he needs revaccination as the damaged vaccine cannot trigger an adequate immune response against the disease.

On the other hand, the healthcare facility might lose its reputation and spend extra money replacing the damaged vaccine stock.

How to Deal With Such Mistakes?

As such mistakes can happen in your healthcare facility, you should have an emergency plan in place to deal with incidents involving exposure of vaccines to out-of-range temperatures.

In this context, you should follow the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which recommends formulation and maintenance of storage and handling operating procedures (SOP).

According to the CDC, detailed SOPs have to be written clearly, and up-to-date. The upside of the SOPs is that they will help your staff follow the proper vaccine management procedures and simultaneously help your facility remain organized apart from serving as reference material for your staff.

What is the Structure of the SOPs?

SOPs should bear information about the following :

General Information

SOPs should have detailed contact information about vaccine manufacturers, equipment service providers, and facility staff.

Storage and Handling Procedures

The appropriate storage and handling procedures must be a part of the SOPs. Ensure that you include all aspects of proper vaccine management in the SOPs, from ordering new vaccines to monitoring storage conditions.

Emergency Handling

The SOPs should have clear guidelines about the steps your staff should take during equipment malfunctions, natural disasters, power failures, improper storage, and other emergencies that could compromise vaccines.

Temperature Excursion Handling

Ensure that you include clear instructions about handling temperature excursion incidents.

Emergency Contacts

The SOPs should have a list of emergency contact details, such as manufacturer, local health department, and vaccine program coordinators.

The SOPs are critical to handle situations when your staff fails to store vaccines in the right ways. Ensure that each of your staff members receives training about the correct SOPs to follow during a temperature excursion event or emergency.

How to Handle a Compromised Vaccine?

Despite your best efforts and practices, you cannot nullify the possibility of your vaccines getting compromised due to mistakes by your staff.

In such a situation, it will help if you follow the CDC's recommendations to handle compromised vaccines.

Do not assume that a vaccine is damaged if it is accidentally left out of the cold storage. Instead, call up a professional from the manufacturer to determine whether the vaccine is usable based on the temperature excursion's duration and magnitude.

Moreover, the CDC recommends the following steps:

• Notify your staff members about the exposed vaccine, and record the duration of the exposure.
• Determine the heat exposure using a Vaccine Vial Monitor
• Document the temperature excursion event, detailing what had happened
• Get in touch with the manufacturer and the local health authority

Conclusion

Unwanted events, such as accidentally leaving a vaccine outside the freezer, can happen in your healthcare facility for various reasons. Although you cannot totally avoid such an occurrence, you can put preventative measures to minimize the possibility of temperature excursions.