Motivational Educational Training to Address COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Health Care Workers

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Introduction/Purpose: COVID-19 is a preventable disease with vaccines like other infectious diseases. There are high rates of Vaccine Hesitancy (VH) among Health Care Workers (HCWs) (Finney Rutten, et al, 2021). VH is characterized by complacency about vaccination, lack of confidence in the vaccine, refusal, or disbelief despite the free availability of the vaccination (Finney Rutten, et al, 2021). The purpose of this project is to determine the effect of using an evidence-based intervention of motivational educational training strategy (METS) on HCWs' VH and their negative beliefs related to the COVID-19 vaccination. The goal of this project is to decrease the COVID-19 VH and negative beliefs among these HCWs. Methods: This study was performed using a pre-test and post-test study design. The study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital. We recruited the nurses from this tertiary care setting using a convenient sampling method. The participants filled out online pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys. VH was measured using the Oxford Survey for VH. Also, Oxford’s COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence & Complacency Scale survey was used to measure the beliefs related to COVID-19 Vaccination. Our intervention is based on the Health Belief Model. An online evidence-based educational program was delivered to the participants. Descriptive statistics and unpaired t-tests were used to analyze the data using SPSS version 23.0. Results: The final study comprised of 20 participants. HCWs showed a significant decrease in VH and negative beliefs related to COVID-19 vaccination after receiving the intervention. The mean (SD) VH scores related to the COVID-19 vaccine decreased from the pre-intervention phase of 58.1(7.67) to the post-intervention phase score of 50.85 (6.43). Also, the score for negative beliefs decreased from a pre-intervention score of 37.7 ( 14.7) to a post-intervention score of 32.35 (9.6). Discussion: VH has been the limiting step in the global efforts to control the current COVID-19 pandemic (Sallam., 2021). There are improved negative beliefs and decreased VH among HCWs after receiving our educational program, thereby, influencing their decisions related to the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine. The findings of this study have implications for HCWs working in different settings. Therefore, our intervention could be used to address the VH among other HCWs, prevent this high-risk population from this deadly disease, and decrease the burden of COVID-19 on the US economy.

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COVID-19, Healthcare worker, Vaccination, Educational training, Vaccine hesitancy
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