Monitoring Vaccine Safety: United States Vaccine Safety Surveillance Systems.
Lauren Head Zauche, Elaine R Miller, Sehwa S Kim and 2 others
PMID 41478707WHAT IT FOUND
Pediatric nurses and nurse practitioners should familiarize themselves with U.S. vaccine safety surveillance systems like V-safe and VAERS to effectively address caregiver concerns and support vaccine confidence.
Key findings
01Pediatric providers should be familiar with vaccine safety surveillance systems to know where to seek resources when caregivers have questions or express concerns about vaccines.
02V-safe is a text-message-based active surveillance system that monitors postvaccination symptoms for select vaccines, including COVID-19 and RSV.
03VAERS is a passive reporting system that collects reports of adverse events following vaccination from anyone, including healthcare providers and patients, to detect possible safety signals.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This is a narrative review and does not present original data or a systematic search strategy. The content is descriptive and focuses on U.S. systems, limiting applicability to other national contexts. It does not evaluate the effectiveness of specific nurse-led interventions on vaccine confidence, only describing the systems nurses can use.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use VAERS reports as evidence that a vaccine causes a specific adverse event. VAERS is a passive reporting system that detects potential signals but cannot determine causality or rates because it lacks an unvaccinated comparison group and suffers from underreporting and reporting bias.