Simulated Encounters With Vaccine-Hesitant Parents: Arts-Based Video Scenario and a Writing Exercise

Abstract

Vaccine hesitancy is an increasing and urgent global public health challenge. Medical students’ encounters with vaccine-hesitant parents, however, remain incidental and unexplored. During pre-clinical training, the vaccine-hesitant parents are typically represented through impersonal text-based cases, lists of their concerns, and sometimes a virtual patient. However, in reality, vaccine-hesitant parents have many health beliefs and arguments that are accompanied with intense emotions, and students remain unaware and unprepared for them. This study is an experimental pilot test in stimulating the medical students’ understanding of, and ability to respond to, vaccine-hesitant parents’ beliefs and questions. An arts-based video scenario and a writing exercise are used to demonstrate a rich case of vaccine hesitancy, including a simulated dialogue between a parent and a student. The study invites vaccine-hesitant parents to ask questions to medical students, then it incorporates these questions in a video scenario and subsequently invites the students to answer these questions as junior doctors. The study examines how the peer group discussion after the video viewing resembles a hospital breakroom conversation and how the written dialogue with a vaccine-hesitant parent simulates a consultation-room encounter.

“On whose side are you?”: Artist-researcher positionality in a global public health challenge

“…When considering the impact of the documentary, its main aim was to expose medical students to reallife parents and their noncompliance to medical advice. The film has thus far been employed in two medical schools' curriculum, and the students' responses have been studied through qualitative analysis (Koski, Lehto, and Hakkarainen 2018). Other audiences' responses have not been recorded or further examined; however, the film reaches out to a variety of different scientific and artistic contexts internationally.…”

“…This documentary has been screened in several festivals and exhibitions, but its primary audience comprises medical students. I designed a writing exercise, together with the film screening and related discussions, as an educational intervention and conducted a pilot study on this intervention with my clinical teacher collaborators (Koski, Lehto & Hakkarainen 2018). The intention of this phase of the project was to prepare medical students to respond to different health beliefs and non-compliance in a respectful manner.…”

Rapid Development and Testing of a COVID-19 Vaccine Curriculum for Pediatricians

“…A review of literature related to vaccine education identified what was known and gaps to fill through this educational initiative. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26] Step 2. Targeted Needs Assessment With the rapidly evolving knowledge in the scientific community around COVID-19 vaccines, the group decided to target education to pediatric clinicians.…”

Vaccine Hesitancy Counseling—an Educational Intervention to Teach a Critical Skill to Preclinical Medical Students

“…There are only a few published reports of educational interventions that focus on specifically teaching medical students' communication skills for counseling vaccine-hesitant patients and parents. These range from an art-based video format helping preclinical students reflect on the health beliefs raised by vaccine-hesitant parents [8] to flipped classroom and case-based format for third-year students [9]. Schnaith et al showed an educational intervention followed by role-play resulted in an increase in student awareness about the HPV vaccine as well as improved student comfort level discussing this with vaccine-hesitant parents [10].…”