Are Recent Medical Graduates More Skeptical of Vaccines?

Abstract

Rates of delay and refusal of recommended childhood vaccines are increasing in many U.S. communities. Children’s health care providers have a strong influence on parents’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about vaccines. Provider attitudes towards immunizations vary and affect their immunization advocacy. One factor that may contribute to this variability is their familiarity with vaccine-preventable diseases and their sequelae. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association of health care provider year of graduation with vaccines and vaccine-preventable disease beliefs. We conducted a cross sectional survey in 2005 of primary care providers identified by parents of children whose children were fully vaccinated or exempt from one or more school immunization requirements. We examined the association of provider graduation cohort (5 years) with beliefs on immunization, disease susceptibility, disease severity, vaccine safety, and vaccine efficacy. Surveys were completed by 551 providers (84.3% response rate). More recent health care provider graduates had 15% decreased odds of believing vaccines are efficacious compared to graduates from a previous 5 year period; had lower odds of believing that many commonly used childhood vaccines were safe; and 3.7% of recent graduates believed that immunizations do more harm than good. Recent health care provider graduates have a perception of the risk-benefit balance of immunization, which differs from that of their older counterparts. This change has the potential to be reflected in their immunization advocacy and affect parental attitudes.

COVID-19 vaccine acceptance, hesitancy, and determinants among physicians in a university-based teaching hospital in Thailand

“…With only one faculty member reluctant to be vaccinated, physicians-in-training made up most of the Hesitators. This is consistent with previous data that younger physicians were more likely to be skeptical toward vaccination [ 26 ]. Such skepticism could be explained by abundant misleading claims regarding vaccination and the anti-vaxxer movement spreading throughout mainstream media, especially on social media [ 27 ].…”

A systematic review of parental vaccine hesitancy and refusal in childhood vaccination

“…A variety of theoretical frameworks were used to inform the design of the questionnaires used in the studies. The most common was the Health Belief Model (HBM), which was explicitly stated as having been used to inform the questions in 22 (19.0%) studies (26,28,(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47)(48)(49), followed by the Theory of Planned Behaviour, which was used in 5 (4.3%) studies (50)(51)(52)(53)(54)(55). Other studies that were adapted from existing questionnaires may have implicitly been based on these or other theoretical frameworks as a consequence of having adapted from other questionnaires but did not explicitly claim the theoretical framework as a basis for their questions.…”

Design of a national and regional survey among French general practitioners and method of the first wave of survey dedicated to vaccination

“…They also revealed that GPs who were themselves vaccinated against a specific disease were more likely to recommend the vaccination to their patients [5]. However, patients consulting a vaccine-reluctant GP were more likely to adopt the same attitude [6].…”