Researchers explored an alternative pharmacist education intervention as a way of improving pharmacist-patient conversations and decreasing vaccine hesitancy among patients.
After performing a pharmacist education intervention prior to pharmacist-patient conversations regarding vaccination opinions, researchers found that better-informed pharmacists were less likely to have their patients refuse a pneumococcal vaccine. Researchers’ key observation was that patients’ reasonings for hesitancy changed from concerns about efficacy to concerns about cost as more well-informed pharmacists were able to curb doubts surrounding the vaccine’s benefits.
“One approach to increase the vaccination rate against pneumococcal disease is to involve health care professionals who have received targeted education on the topic, can administer vaccines, and have personalized contact with patients. Community pharmacists are uniquely positioned to promote the effective uptake of pneumococcal vaccination because of being a trusted and readily accessible source of health information, with a broad scope of practice,” wrote authors of a study published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association.1
With the inception of the first COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020 to combat the ongoing public health crisis came continuous controversy surrounding vaccine hesitancy and an uncertainty of its benefits. While the COVID-19 pandemic directly affected millions of patients on an unprecedented scale, vaccine hesitancy was significantly prominent given the immense focus the COVID-19 vaccine was given upon its arrival into the public health conversation.2
However, vaccine hesitancy is not a new issue within health care. And while the COVID-19 pandemic was an extreme case, hesitancy is also apparent within patients encouraged to receive other vaccines; in this case, researchers explored pneumococcal vaccine hesitancy.
As vaccine hesitancy has persisted prior to and following the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers looked to community pharmacists and analyzed their ability to combat hesitancy and establish a better relationship that will encourage patients to be more accepting of vaccine efficacy.
Much of the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic left the health care industry as a whole forever changed. But what remains is the sentiment that pharmacists are the most accessible health care providers, especially those from a community pharmacy background because of their proximity to respective communities and the trust they’ve garnered as proven health care experts.1,3
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In the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association study, researchers provided community pharmacists with an education package to increase their ability to promote the pneumococcal vaccine. Results were recorded both before and after pharmacists were given the education package.
A total of 13 pharmacies in Alberta, Canada, were included in the study, yielding 656 patient-pharmacist conversations. Of the 656 conversations, 271 were part of the control group and were conducted prior to the pharmacists’ education packages. The other 385 conversations were conducted following the increased education.
“Time taken for pneumococcal vaccine conversations decreased after pharmacies received the education package. The most common patient-reported reason for refusal, ‘needing more time to think about the vaccine,’ remained similar between stages. However, during the intervention stage, fewer patients refused vaccination due to ‘lack of time to receive it today’ and ‘perceived lack of benefit,’ but more patients refused vaccination due to ‘cost barriers,’” wrote authors of the study.1
On top of the increasingly common sentiments of vaccine hesitancy amongst the public, researchers of another study found that trust in physicians and hospitals also decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic.4 While opinions on health care providers may be more skewed than ever before because of the recency of the pandemic, authors of the study suggested that community pharmacists can bridge the gap of trust between patients and health care providers.
Overall trust in health care providers cannot solely be blamed on growing public sentiments that have risen in the past few years. Indeed, as results of the study display, further education was the key factor that allowed pharmacists to garner increased trust and decreased hesitancy amongst their patients.
However, with the positive findings that pharmacist education can lead to lower vaccine hesitancy, concerns about cost barriers accompanied the newly discovered insights. This leaves researchers with another factor to be studied, which can possibly be a negative influence on vaccine hesitancy going forward.
“After the intervention, patients were less likely to refuse vaccination because of a perceived lack of benefit but were more hesitant about the costs associated with receiving a conjugate vaccine type. Understanding these patient-reported reasons for pneumococcal vaccination refusal yields important insights into vaccine hesitancy and areas to tailor patient-pharmacist conversations to meet individual patient needs,” they concluded.1
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