Immunization Records for Entering Med School

[Turtle48]

I got the form we have to have our doctors fill out before we are able to enter med school, and I have no idea how my physician is supposed to fill it out. I have moved five times in my life and had 5 or 6 doctors...is there anyone in a similar situation (or even with 2 or 3 different doctors) whose immunization records may not all be with your current doctor?

This may be a dumb question, but how am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to call all of my previous doctors and ask them to send my shot records to my current doctor (will all my old doctors even have these from 8 years ago?)? Or will my doctor now somehow be able to figure it out/or do we not need exact dates for immunizations/guess-timates will do?

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[DrMom]

some states keep good records. see if the state health department(s) have such a system. also, you might want to see if your high school still has your records.

 

[Scottish Chap]

I got the form we have to have our doctors fill out before we are able to enter med school, and I have no idea how my physician is supposed to fill it out. I have moved five times in my life and had 5 or 6 doctors...is there anyone in a similar situation (or even with 2 or 3 different doctors) whose immunization records may not all be with your current doctor?

This may be a dumb question, but how am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to call all of my previous doctors and ask them to send my shot records to my current doctor (will all my old doctors even have these from 8 years ago?)? Or will my doctor now somehow be able to figure it out/or do we not need exact dates for immunizations/guess-timates will do?

You're probably gonna have to bite the bullet and get blood drawn and have the IgGs measured to assess immune status. That's what I had to do (rubella, mumps, varicella, rubeola) - each test was about $25. Be sure to check if your school is happy with "positive" for IgG or of they want the antibody titer. The latter is more expensive.

 

[tigress]

Did your college require immunization records? Most do these days, and you might contact them for a record.. If your parents were involved in helping you get ready for college, you might ask them. Also some parents keep copies of immunization records, so if it's an option you could ask them.

Did you spend the first 4 or 5 years of your life in one place? Many of the early immunizations were probably done when you were young. I had trouble getting my records from my college when I was going to grad school, so I had to search for the original records. The pediatrician I went to as a young child had a record in their warehouse, so I payed them like $10 or something to go search them out and send them to me. Unfortunately they weren't very legible 😛

You don't necessarily need a record for all ofyour immunizations if you can't get it. What you can do is go to your current doctor and ask him or her to do blood titers on whatever they can, to prove that you were immunized. This will work for many of the vaccines. Then if you still can't get your records after trying, you can always be re-vaccinated for the others.

Also, guess-timates can work if your doc is okay signing off. Like I had to provide a date of a varicella vaccine or date of chickenpox infection, but I only knew vaguely how old I was, so I made up a month and year, and the doc was cool with that (because I know I had chickenpox).

Good luck. I know from experience how annoying these records can be. When I have kids I'm going to keep a copy of their records in a safe-deposit box or something!