Mthembu Thuli G, Harrison Samantha, Botha Kauthar, Britz Jessica, Katts Brittney, Millar Michaela, Sulliman Zia, Zitha Vutlhari
Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Community and Health Sciences, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa.
Health SA. 2023 Aug 30;28:2265. doi: 10.4102/hsag.v28i0.2265. eCollection 2023.
Higher education institutions (HEIs) developed and implemented a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy to facilitate vaccine acceptance and vaccination among universities' staff and students. However, little is known about influences of the mandatory vaccination policy on health science students at a university and they tend to result in vaccine hesitancy.
To explore the influences of the mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy on health sciences students' vaccine acceptance at HEIs in South Africa.
The study was conducted in one of the universities in the Western Cape Province, South Africa.
An interpretive qualitative exploratory-descriptive research was conducted with 10 participants who were selected using the purposive sampling method to participate in semi-structured interviews. Data were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.
Two themes and 12 sub-themes were identified during the data analysis, namely individual and group influencing factors, as well as contextual influencing factors.
This study revealed that the COVID-19 vaccination mandatory policy influenced the students' quality of life, academic performance and well-being. The findings from this study indicate that there were perceived barriers related to personal and contextual influencing factors than benefits of COVID-19 vaccination.
The understanding of and insight into the influences of the mandatory vaccination policy provided a basis for further strategies that may be developed to address COVID-19 vaccine infodemic, vaccine hesitancy and its risk effects. This can be done through collaboration with different stakeholders to educate health science students about the perceived benefits of COVID-19 vaccination.
高等教育机构制定并实施了一项强制性的新冠疫苗接种政策，以促进大学教职工和学生接受疫苗接种并进行接种。然而，对于一所大学的强制性疫苗接种政策对健康科学专业学生的影响知之甚少，而且这些政策往往会导致疫苗犹豫。
探讨强制性新冠疫苗政策对南非高等教育机构健康科学专业学生疫苗接受度的影响。
该研究在南非西开普省的一所大学进行。
采用解释性定性探索性描述性研究方法，通过目的抽样法选取10名参与者参与半结构化访谈。对数据进行录音、逐字转录并进行主题分析。
数据分析过程中确定了两个主题和12个子主题，即个人和群体影响因素以及背景影响因素。
本研究表明，新冠疫苗强制接种政策影响了学生的生活质量、学业成绩和幸福感。该研究结果表明，与新冠疫苗接种的益处相比，个人和背景影响因素方面存在一些明显的障碍。
对强制性疫苗接种政策影响的理解和洞察为可能制定的进一步策略提供了基础，这些策略可用于应对新冠疫苗信息疫情、疫苗犹豫及其风险影响。这可以通过与不同利益相关者合作来实现，以教育健康科学专业学生了解新冠疫苗接种的潜在益处。
