EC Nursing and Healthcare

Waning confidence in vaccines challenges immunisation programmes globally. The current article reports on a unique dataset of 3,298 individual health professional survey responses, from 34 European countries, as part of the EU project IMMUNION (Improving IMMunisation cooperation in the European UNION). An online questionnaire survey was developed by the Coalition for Vaccination based on the existing Vaccine Training Barometer developed under the framework of the EU Joint Action on Vaccination. The survey ran between 7 June and 4 July 2021. Only 54% of respondents indicated clear confidence in answering questions about vaccines. Over half of respondents (53%) noted that over the past year there were questions about the COVID-19 vaccines which they could not answer. Only 13% of respondents used the websites of international health agencies, such as the ECDC and WHO, to search for information. There is a clear need for additional training on several aspects of vaccination for healthcare professionals in Europe. Further research is needed to understand the missing link between the efforts of international health agencies to develop information materials and their use by health professionals.

Keywords: Doctors; Nurses; Pharmacists; Midwives; Support Workers; Students; Vaccine Advocacy

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