Getting Ready for the Flu Season 2025/26
Here are some updates and preparation tips for this coming flu season.
- The PSI changed the retention rules in September 2024. For audit purposes you need to hold 2 years of data. Our system holds the data for 12 months after the date the last appointment was accessed. To be compliant export all last years appointments and file into a 2024/25 Flu Season folder on your computer.
- To export, click on the submenu icon (small square button with 3 lines in it to the right) and select Export Appointments as a CSV. How to export is on this Booking Engine Operations Quick Start Guide.
- Click on the wait list and see if you have anyone on the wait list from last year. To simplify this year’s wait list, consider deleting the old appointments on the wait list. To do this click on Wait List, select the bookings from last year and press Cancel button on the blue bar at the botton of the page. Please ensure they are not this years batch.
- Check the appointment types we have created for you. At the time of writing, the HSE had not updated their guidleins for this coming season. We expect to be updating the following seasonal appointment types:
- Flu for >18s
- Booster COVID
- Combined COVID Booster and Flu for >18s
- Childs 2-17 years nasal vaccine in pharmacy
- Confirm the schools you will be vaccinating last year, by completing this schools form as soon as you are ready.
- Update your schedule in Resources and under Appointment Types, switch the appointment types to Unavailable, Wait List or Allow Booking. Here is a Booking Engine Key Settings Quick Start Guide which details scheduling and setting appointment types.
- PS: here is a quick refresher course on the booking engine and all quick start guides are on our support page.
School Vaccinations - Booking Form
For the 2025/26 season, we are creating a dedicated link for each school. This has the added bonus the the appointment itself becomes a filter allowing you to easily create a short list of pupils in each school.
The school specific form includes the following information:
- Name of parent or legal guardian consenting to the child’s vaccination
- Address of parent or legal guardian consenting to the child’s vaccination
- Phone number of parent or legal guardian consenting to the child’s vaccination
- Relationship to the child being vaccinated:[Parent or Legal Guardian]
- Child’s School
- Child’s Teacher’s Name and Classroom
This there will be 3 types of intake forms for the schools:
- Pre-school, Montessori or Crèches
- Primary
- Secondary
As per the HSE schools toolkit, if the parent or guardian is not present, you must confirm the consent was given by a parent or legal guardian and you must confirm their identity. The above information will help you identify the adult consenting to the vaccination and the relevant child with the child’s teacher. more details on the HSE’s LAIV programme is here.
School Vaccinations - Suggested Workflow
Based on feedback from pharmacies who vaccinated in schools last year, the following worked well.
- Set the school Appointment Type to wait list mode.
- Agree a date with the school.
- Send a link to the school and dont forget the category: /book/?category=SCH. Note this can also be added to a website page. Note this link has been or will be sent to you if you completed this schools form.
- Get the school to circulate the link via email or the school’s app.
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As bookings come in, you can group classes into buckets. To do this, pick a LABEL name for each class/teacher(up to 5 characters long) eg. 1ST for 1st Class …..etc. Each class should have a unique label. This label then becomes a filter which allows you to easily create a list of children who are attending the specific class.
- As per the HSE schools toolkit, the parent or guardian has a right to withdraw consent at any time in advance of the vaccination. To aid this, once a child has been entered on a wait list by a parent or guardian, the following email (only) gets sent:
Hi,
Thank you for registering on our wait list for the children’s flu vaccine school clinic.
We are organising the vaccination schedule with the school and will be in touch.
If after making this booking, you wish to withdraw consent to having your child vaccinated at the school, please call YOUR-PHONE before the date of vaccination.
Please do not reply to this email.
Regards
Your pharmacy team at YOUR-PHARMACY-NAME.
- To further reinforce the right to withdraw, consider getting the school to send all parents a confirmed vaccination date.
- And you can also schedule the appointment and a confirmation email or text message will be sent detailing the following information. Note there is no time on this message:
YOUR-PHARMACY-NAME is doing your child’s FLU vaccination at the school on DATE. To cancel click: $LINK.
- The parent can click the link to cancel the appointment thereby withdrawing consent. Note the same link allows them to go back on a wait list or confirm attendance.
Details on these new functions and the school consent workflow can be found on this webinar recording. Please complete this schools form, if doing schools vaccinations.
Note re School Appointment CSV Export
Unless you have requested otherwise, all school appointment types only request an email from the consentor. By doing this we removed the ability for an SMS to be sent in order to guarantee that parental consent and consent withdrawal information has been emailed to every parent. Therefore the phone number is not standard column in the CSV export and will be blank.
Instead we added a specific field called “Phone number of parent or legal guardian consenting to the child’s vaccination:” to make it absolutely clear on the information being sought – for consent and child identification reasons. This field forms part of the export and will be another column – typically in or near column S depending on the questions configured for your pharmacy.
Appointments & Updated Cohorts
To be confirmed.
Over 18s FLU vaccination appointment type: The eligible cohorts for a free flu vaccine in the 2024/25 flu season are:
- Over 60 years
- Pregnant
- Health or care worker
- Chronic heart, liver, kidney, respiratory or neurological disease
- Diabetes
- Haemoglobinopathies
- Impaired immune system due to disease or treatment
- Cancer
- Down syndrome
- BMI over 40
- Compromised respiratory function
- Close contact with poultry, water fowl or pigs
- Carer or household contact of a person with a health condition on this list
- Carer or household contact of a person with Down Syndrome
COVID-19 Booster Appointment Type: The eligible cohorts for a free flu vaccine in the 2024/25 flu season are:
- Age 60 or older
- Pregnant (COVID vaccine is recommended if it is more than 6 months since previousl vaccination or infection. The vaccine can be given at any stage, ideally between 20 and 34 weeks.
- Health or care worker
- Age 6m to 59 yrs with immunocompromise leading to a poor vaccine response
- Age 6m to 59 yrs with a condition increasing the risk of COVID-19
- Age 18-59 years requesting a consultation with the pharmacist
Childs Nasal Flu Appointment Type: all children aged 2 to 17 years can get the nasal vaccine free of charge. Although some individuals should be offered an injection.
