(1) Background: vaccination of healthcare workers (HCWs) against seasonal influenza is considered the most effective way to protect HCWs, ensure patient’s safety and to maintain essential health care services during influenza epidemics. With the present study we aimed to evaluate the efficacy of incremental bundles of measures implemented during the last three flu campaigns and to assess the attitudes towards influenza vaccination and a potential vaccine against COVID-19 among HCWs, in a large university hospital in Pisa, Italy. (2) Methods: We described measures implemented during 2018/2019, 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 and assessed their impact on flu vaccine coverage (VC) among employees and residents in Pisa university hospital. We considered sex, profession and ward to investigate differences in uptake. In addition, in 2020 a survey was developed and distributed to all employees to evaluate flu and COVID-19 vaccines attitudes. (3) Results: during the 2018/19 and 2019/20 flu campaigns the overall VC rate among HCWs was, respectively, 10.2% and 11.9%. In 2020/21 the overall VC rate jumped to 39.3% (+ 230.6%). Results from the survey indicated a more positive attitude towards flu vaccine as compared to COVID-19 vaccines among the 10.6% of the staff members who responded to the survey. In addition, 70.97% of HCWs totally agreed that being vaccinated against influenza would be more important than the previous years because of COVID-19 emergency. (4) Conclusions: a significant increase in VC was observed in 2020/21, especially among those sub-groups with consistently lower uptake in previous years. The COVID-19 pandemic positively influenced flu vaccination uptake during the 2020/21 season.

The objective of this study is to evaluate ChatGPT’s accuracy and reliability in answering complex medical questions related to occupational health and explore the implications and limitations of AI in occupational health medicine. The study also provides recommendations for future research in this area and informs decision-makers about AI’s impact on healthcare. A group of physicians was enlisted to create a dataset of questions and answers on Italian occupational medicine legislation. The physicians were divided into two teams, and each team member was assigned a different subject area. ChatGPT was used to generate answers for each question, with/without legislative context. The two teams then evaluated human and AI-generated answers blind, with each group reviewing the other group’s work. Occupational physicians outperformed ChatGPT in generating accurate questions on a 5-point Likert score, while the answers provided by ChatGPT with access to legislative texts were comparable to those of professional doctors. Still, we found that users tend to prefer answers generated by humans, indicating that while ChatGPT is useful, users still value the opinions of occupational medicine professionals.

(1) Background: In 2022, monkeypox (Mpox) was declared a public health emergency. The European Medicines Agency has authorized the use of Imvanex/Jynneos, a smallpox vaccine, for coverage against pox. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are all considered by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to be at risk, but in Italy, vaccination was offered only to laboratory personnel. The present study aims to investigate smallpox vaccination coverage (VC) that provides protection against Mpox among HCWs in an Italian university hospital and to assess HCWs’ attitudes towards the possibility of getting vaccinated against Mpox. (2) Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey. 336 HCWs from selected wards were asked to fill out a self-declaration to collect their sex, profession, ward, vaccination status, and attitude toward Mpox vaccination. (3) Results: 60.71% of HCWs involved provided the requested data; 38.7% of them were previously vaccinated against smallpox, which corresponds to 23.5% of the total HCWs in the wards considered. Considering those born before 1979 as vaccinated, VC increases from 23.5% to 41.7%; the percentage of HCWs who adhered to vaccination is 23%; laboratory technicians showed a lower willingness to be vaccinated. The ward with the highest willingness to vaccinate is proctological surgery. (4) Conclusions: Based on our experience, a variability in smallpox VC and in willingness to vaccination has emerged both among different job titles and age categories and across the wards analyzed. Additionally, our survey reveals that vaccination attitudes are higher among HCWs from wards that currently do not have free access to such vaccinations.

Large language models, such as ChatGPT-4 and Google Bard, have demonstrated potential in healthcare. This study explores their utility in occupational medicine, a field where decisions rely on compliance with specific workplace health and safety regulations. A dataset of questions encompassing key occupational health topics derived from the Italian Legislative Decree 81/08, which governs workplace health and safety, was utilized. Responses from ChatGPT-4 with contextual information (ChatGPT-4+context) and Google Bard were evaluated for accuracy and completeness, with error categorization used to identify common issues. Subcategories of the topics of the regulations were analyzed as well. In total, 433 questions were included in our analysis. ChatGPT-4+context surpasses Bard in terms of accuracy and completeness in responses, with a lower error rate in the categories analyzed, except for the percentage of missed responses. In the subcategories analyzed, Bard is superior to ChatGPT-4+context only in the areas of the manual handling of loads and physical hazards. ChatGPT-4+context outperformed Bard in providing answers about Italian regulations on health and safety at work. This study highlights the potential and limitations of large language models as decision-support tools in occupational medicine and underscores the importance of regulatory context in enhancing their reliability.

(1) Background: Mpox was declared an international public health emergency by WHO. Initially, Smallpox vaccine in Italy was offered only to laboratory personnel at direct risk of infection. Currently, Healthcare workers (HCWs) are all considered by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) to be at low or moderate risk. (2) Methods: To assess smallpox vaccination coverage among HCWs in an Italian hospital with different levels of risk of exposure to Mpox infection and to assess their attitudes toward vaccination, a self-report was administered to HCWs stratified at high and low/moderate risk. (3) Results: Of the 338 HCWs evaluated, 60.36% provided the requested data; among them the percentage of previously vaccinated staff was 38.7%, which corresponds to 23.4% of the total HCWs in the departments considered. Considering those born before 1979 as vaccinated, vaccination coverage increases from 23.4% to 41.4%. The department with the highest percentage of vaccinated is infectious diseases (60.5%); The percentage of HCWs who adhered to vaccination is 23%; only 8.8% of laboratory staff want to vaccinate, compared with 100% of midwives. The department with the highest percentage of vaccination adherence is proctology (85.7%). (4) Conclusions: Given the vaccination adherence rate and the vaccination coverage of the departments analyzed, it would be useful to extend vaccination against Smallpox to frontline HCWs involved in patient care in Italy too.