Community pharmacists’ willingness and barriers to provide vaccination during COVID-19 pandemic in Jordan

Abstract

Providing vaccination in community pharmacies could increase the vaccination coverage rate as well as help reducing the workload of the healthcare system. The current study was conducted to evaluate community pharmacists’ willingness and barriers to provide vaccination in community pharmacy setting. A validated questionnaire which included eight items to evaluate willingness and eleven items to evaluate the barriers to provide vaccines was distributed online. Binary logistic regression was conducted to explore the factors that are significantly associated with willingness and barriers to provide the vaccine. Among the 201 participating pharmacists, 174 (86.6%) had a high willingness level. Lack of authorization (91.6%), lack of collaboration with other healthcare professionals (85.6%), and lack of space for storage (74.1%) were the most recognized barriers to vaccinate. Pharmacists with BSc degree demonstrated less willingness (OR = 0.18 (0.07–0.46), and increased barriers (OR = 4.86 (1.56–15.17) to provide the vaccine when compared with Pharm D and postgraduate pharmacists P < .01. Factors including male gender (OR: 6.10), working in chain pharmacy (OR: 8.98) and rural areas (OR: 4.31), moderate income (OR: 19.34) and less years of experience (OR:0.85) were significantly associated with increased barriers to provide the vaccine ( P < .05). Despite the high willingness of the community pharmacists to vaccinate, several barriers were present. Enhancing pharmacists’ authorization and collaboration with other healthcare professionals and providing space for storage along with providing training courses and workshops should be considered to enhance pharmacist’s engagement in vaccination service.

Pharmacists’ readiness and willingness to vaccinate the public in United Arab Emirates community pharmacies: A cross-sectional study

“…The majority of the study population showing readiness to initiate pharmacy-based vaccination services in the UAE is consistent with similar studies conducted in the region. 11,12 In the cross-sectional survey that assessed Jordanian community pharmacists' readiness and willingness to deliver vaccination services, 64.5% of qualified pharmacists were willing to vaccinate patients and 65.0% of unqualified participants were willing to receive the required training and qualifications to be able to vaccinate. 11 Another cross-sectional online survey of Jordanian community pharmacists found that that 86.6% of respondents had a high level of willingness to administer vaccines in the community pharmacy setting.…”

“…10 Although vaccine administration is not yet a service provided by the majority of community pharmacists in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), studies from Jordan and Saudi Arabia suggest that community pharmacists in the region have shown great willingness to deliver pharmacy-based vaccination services. 9,11,12 Considering the international and regional shifts towards pharmacy-based vaccinations, the objectives of this study were: i) to assess the readiness of community pharmacies in the UAE to start pharmacy-based vaccination services; ii) analyse if community pharmacists are willing to undertake relevant training; and iii) explore factors influencing pharmacists' initiation of community-based vaccination.…”

Emerging Roles of Community Pharmacist in Public Health: A Review on ASIA

“…Despite the widespread intention to offer vaccination in community pharmacies, the current study discovered various barriers to vaccination. Implementation of training courses and educational initiatives should be considered to remove changeable barriers and improve accessibility to pharmacist-delivered immunization services [35].…”

“…Be it global, national, state, regional, and institutional, the pharmacists have a responsibility to promote public health [66]. In this article review, several interventions have highlighted the emerging roles of community pharmacists on public health especially on smoking cessation [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], weight management [15][16][17][18]68], COVID-19 [58][59][60][61], chronic disease management [19][20][21][22][23][24][25]62], drug misuse prevention and management [26][27][28][29][30][31], and immunization and vaccination [32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46].…”

“…Most Asian country pharmacists agree and are willing to play part to boost pharmacovigilance through a series of trainings and certifications for eligibility to administer vaccinations and dispensing immunizations [38][39][40][41]43]. Moreover, some studies believe that a change in curriculum of pharmacy programs for new pharmacy graduates must include the knowledge of vaccination and immunizations in training courses and other educational programs [35,42,46]. In Turkey, a study was carried out to determine how community pharmacists affected older Turkish seniors who had non-communicable diseases.…”