The Miracle of Getting a Flu Shot

You may think that the title is a bit snarky on my part, but it really is something like a miracle to get a flu shot in Halifax. This is one area that Ontario seriously has it right- there may be hundreds of things wrong in my home province, but the distribution of flu shots is not one of them.

In Ontario, you can get a flu shot either from your doctor’s office or at one of the many flu clinics in your area. All you have to do is look at the schedule and find the day and time when your local school/mall/community centre is hosting a clinic. And there are lots of days to choose from and the time windows are fairly lengthy and convenient.

I was naive enough to assume this practice was the same all across the country. That was clearly silly of me.

In Nova Scotia, you go to your doctor’s office to get a flu shot or go to the clinic at your workplace. Now, what do you do if you don’t have a doctor and your employer is not holding a clinic, like me? Well, you go on this website, which is clear as mud:

http://www.gov.ns.ca/hpp/cdpc/influenza.asp

In my case, on the map I can click on the links to either ‘Capital Health’ or ‘IWK Health Centre’. Capital Health has a flu page, but it doesn’t really tell you where to get a flu shot. You just click on links that send you round in circles. And IWK Health Centre’s page has no information about flu shots and if you search ‘flu shot 2011’ on their website, the only thing you will find out is what the schedule was in 2009. Very helpful.

Then I contemplated waiting to get my flu shot until I was back in Ontario but then I kept seeing people cough into their hands and then touch the poles on every bus trip I made that week, so that option was clearly out. I had the flu in 4^th year university and I didn’t want to go through that again if I could help it.

So and this point I became rather frustrated. So I ignored all of the government websites and just typed ‘flu shot Halifax’ into Google. You will find one useful link, to the website of a chain of walk-in clinics. They have one location in downtown Halifax. Great! This is their schedule for the flu clinic at that location (I was looking this information up the last week of October):

Wednesday Oct. 26- 5:30-9:00pm

Saturday Nov. 5- 9am- 12pm

Tuesday Nov. 8- 1-4pm

That’s it. I had missed the Wednesday clinic and the two other time slots are during my regular work hours. Fortunately, I was able to start work late on the Saturday, so I got my flu shot then. The government stats say that 38% of the province’s population got their flu shot last year. I’m surprised the numbers are that high, given the hoops you have to jump through. But I got one in the end, so that's all that matters.