Things are not as bad as they seem: physicians' ability to predict their clinical practice when a new vaccine becomes available.

Survey results regarding primary care physicians' likelihood of recommending a new vaccine were compared before and after the vaccine was licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for three new vaccines: herpes zoster (HZ), human papillomavirus (HPV) and rotavirus (RV), using physician networks representative of United States physicians. The main purpose of this study was to determine (a) how accurately physicians predict their eventual vaccine recommendations and the barriers they will experience in delivering the new vaccine and (b) whether physicians shift towards more or less strongly recommending a new vaccine from pre- to post-licensure. Responses from 284, 152 and 184 physicians were analyzed for the three vaccines, respectively. For all vaccines, there was a significant association between physicians' pre- and post-licensure recommendations (p<0.05). When responses changed from pre- to post-licensure, physicians tended to recommend a given vaccine more strongly than they had anticipated pre-licensure. Before vaccine availability, physicians tended to predict greater barriers to vaccine delivery than they eventually experienced. Surveys are useful for predicting physician practices, but may provide a slightly pessimistic view of physician adoption of new vaccines. Such data can be helpful in devising strategies to encourage vaccine delivery by physicians.