Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA; Department of Health Promotion and Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health, Texas A&M University. 212 Adriance Lab Rd. 1266 TAMU, College Station, TX, USA.
Rutland Regional Medical Center, 160 Allen St, Rutland, VT, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2023 Sep;333:116150. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116150. Epub 2023 Aug 5.
To explore the strategies that primary care physicians use to address patient COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.
We administered an online survey to 625 primary care physicians from May 14 to May 25, 2021, to assess the messages that primary care physicians use to encourage hesitant patients to get vaccinated against COVID-19.589 physicians from the total pool of 625 provided open-ended responses. We conducted thematic content analysis on the responses based on previous research and themes identified within the data.
The survey was administered online using the survey research firm Dynata.
Eleven primary themes emerged from our analysis, which included, physicians addressing specific concerns about vaccine safety (including costs versus benefits), physicians helping patients understand what it means to remain unvaccinated, or whether physicians try to connect emotionally through the use of guilt, or personal experience, whether physicians use derisive language to communicate with unvaccinated patients. In addition, a small number of physicians indicated they would not attempt to persuade someone who is vaccine hesitant.
Our study shows that while some of the physicians used different strategies to address vaccine hesitancy, some of the physicians used harsh language or did not make any effort to reduce COVID-19 related vaccine hesitancy among their patients. Focused advocacy and training are needed to increase physician engagement in vaccine-related dialogues with their patients. Such efforts will ensure that critical opportunities for patient education and awareness-building are not missed and ensure high levels of vaccination uptake.
探索初级保健医生解决患者对 COVID-19 疫苗犹豫不决的策略。
我们于 2021 年 5 月 14 日至 5 月 25 日向 625 名初级保健医生进行了在线调查，以评估初级保健医生用于鼓励犹豫不决的患者接种 COVID-19 疫苗的信息。在总共 625 名医生中，有 589 名提供了开放式回答。我们根据先前的研究和数据中确定的主题对这些回复进行了主题内容分析。
该调查是通过调查研究公司 Dynata 在线进行的。
我们的分析得出了 11 个主要主题，包括医生针对疫苗安全性（包括成本与收益）的具体问题进行沟通，帮助患者理解保持未接种疫苗的含义，或者医生是否试图通过使用内疚感或个人经历来建立情感联系，医生是否使用轻蔑的语言与未接种疫苗的患者沟通。此外，少数医生表示他们不会试图说服对疫苗犹豫不决的人。
我们的研究表明，虽然一些医生使用了不同的策略来解决疫苗犹豫问题，但一些医生使用了苛刻的语言，或没有做出任何努力来减少患者对 COVID-19 相关疫苗的犹豫。需要有针对性的倡导和培训，以增加医生与患者就疫苗相关问题进行对话的积极性。这些努力将确保不会错过患者教育和提高认识的关键机会，并确保高水平的疫苗接种率。
