Assessing Primary Health Care Nurses’ Knowledge toward Immunizations: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

Background: The current nursing workforce needs to be skilled, confident, and competent to address the rapid change in Primary Health Care services, to align with the National Vision of Qatar. This is emphasized in the Primary Health Care Strategy 2018-2023. This strategy outlines the need of having a skilled nursing workforce to administer and educate the public about the importance of immunizations. Primary Health Care nurses emanate from several nationalities and hence possess various level of knowledge and background related to immunization administration. Design and methods: To assess Primary Health Care nurses’ knowledge before and after the delivered immunization education program in Qatar. The study was part of a Sequential mixed method research study that aimed to assess the Primary Health Care nurses’ knowledge, attitude, and practice of nurses before and after the conducted training program. A self-administered survey, specifically developed for the research project was loaded in Qualtrics and sent to participants of the immunization education program before and after training. Participants were trained in two cohorts from October to December, 2018 in Qatar. For the purposes of this paper, data about the immunization knowledge was statistically analyzed using the SPSS Software version 25 and Microsoft Excel.Results: Specific areas were identified as knowledge gaps among the participants of the two cohorts. Moreover, the developed education program showed overall improvement in the participants’ knowledge.Conclusions: The study results have demonstrated that the delivered immunization education program significantly increases the participants’ knowledge about immunization in certain areas of the primary healthcare clinics they work, including vaccine safety, efficiency, and contraindications in the delivery of vaccines to the public.

Professional care workforce: a rapid review of evidence supporting methods of recruitment, retention, safety, and education

“…The initial search strategy resulted in 8343 studies, of which 2749 were duplicates. Following screening of title and abstracts, as well as full text, 30 studies were included [ 40 – 69 ] (Fig. 1 ).…”

“… Consumer engagement? Primary outcome measure Domain for the primary outcome 1 Abdulla et al 2020 [ 40 ] Not stated Improve knowledge and skill acquisition Primary Health Care nurses’ knowledge before and after immunization education program Inservice training/education program Primary Health Care Centres’ (PHCCs) work force training department (WFTD) Immunisation course (no details provided); and practical (minimum of 10 vaccinations) Education Nursing Workforce Qatar (high-income) Primary Health (health centres, school health, home healthcare, community health) Mixed method (pre–post-survey/interviews) No No Knowledge (administration of vaccinations) Education 2 Alwy Al-Beity et al 2020 [ 41 ] Helping Mothers Survive Bleeding after Birth (HMS BAB) Improve knowledge and skill acquisition (decrease mortality rates) HMS BAB training is competency-based simulation training for all health workers in a maternity unit Inservice training/education program HMS BAB curriculum developed by Laerdal Global Health and Jhpiego (part of larger HMS BAB trial) Master trainers trained 12 district trainers (1 week). Health workers = 1 day of training.…”

“…For the 24 studies with a primary focus on a care workforce education program, there were marked variations in the education interventions provided (e.g., leadership development, condition-based education programs, extending scope of practice), the location (e.g., USA, Australia, East Africa), the setting (e.g., hospitals, aged care, primary care), and the outcome measures used. As shown in Tables 1 and 2 , both validated and unvalidated measurement tools were to measures the change in workforce knowledge [ 40 – 46 , 48 – 52 , 55 – 62 , 64 – 67 ]. Of the 24 studies, only two used a randomised controlled trial design, [ 49 , 58 ] with the rest using a pre–post study design.…”

Knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of nursing students regarding vaccines

“…17 Vaccine knowledge gaps identified among primary care nurses, in the State of Qatar, included the safe handling and administration of vaccines, the efficiency of vaccines, and their contraindications. 18 A study from Kenya determined that less than a third of nurses had good knowledge and practices regarding adverse events following immunisation, and more than two-third of participants were not knowledgeable about adverse events post-immunisation. 19 Although immunisation is part of the scope of nurse training, a recent scoping review identified limited inclusion and a lack of training resources for nurse training on immunisation in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs).…”

“… 17 Vaccine knowledge gaps identified among primary care nurses, in the State of Qatar, included the safe handling and administration of vaccines, the efficiency of vaccines, and their contraindications. 18 A study from Kenya determined that less than a third of nurses had good knowledge and practices regarding adverse events following immunisation, and more than two-third of participants were not knowledgeable about adverse events post-immunisation. 19 …”