Could out-of-hours appointments be a booster for vaccines uptake?

Drafting in retired nurses and nursing students to widen parental access to appointments could be the shot in the arm the routine immunisation programme needs

‘They’ve really dropped you in it!’, said the kindly practice nurse.

She was about to inject my little granddaughter with the triple series of routine vaccinations, and I had the distressing task of holding the baby.

It fell to me to take her to the clinic, because her mum and dad were at work. Research has shown that one of the reasons for the decline in childhood inoculation uptake is that appointments are mostly on offer during the day when parents are out earning a crust. This is fine if there are willing grannies and grandads. But