Despite experiencing the virus’s devastation firsthand, many health care workers did not intend to get vaccinated when the COVID-19 vaccinations became available. However, a recent Northwestern Medicine research illustrates how rapidly many of them changed their attitudes at a large urban health care system, resulting in a vaccination rate of 95 percent by spring 2021.
The study found:
“This study found health care workers’ attitudes about COVID-19 vaccination could change in a very short period of time,” said lead study author Charlesnika Evans, professor of preventive medicine in epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “It shows there is opportunity to change people’s decisions about not getting vaccinated.”
The study was recently published in the journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
The first survey for this analysis was administered to 4,180 Northwestern Medicine health care workers who enrolled in the study in December 2020 through February 2021. The second survey was in June 2021. The survey inquired about COVID-19 exposures and experiences, as well as vaccination status. The participants also had blood tests to measure their antibodies when they enrolled in spring 2020 and six months later.
Evans believes that a variety of circumstances led to health care professionals changing their attitudes. These included a clear message about the vaccines’ safety, easy access to vaccinations at the hospital, and awareness that workplace mandates were coming in the future, as well as the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration.
“We saw a significant change in the number of people who said they would get the vaccine after the EUA was issued. People may have felt, ‘OK, this might be safe for me to take.’ “
Gender, race, and occupation played a role in vaccination acceptance, the study showed. Nurses (versus physicians), non-Hispanic Black (versus Asian) health care workers, and women versus men were less likely to report an intention to get vaccinated.
Individuals who showed negative antibody results were more likely to get vaccinated. People older than 65 years of age were more likely to get vaccinated. Women had a lower intention to get vaccinated than men, especially those who were in their reproductive years. Nurses also had lower intentions to get the vaccine, despite the reports that nurses have the highest rates of COVID-19 within health care workers.
One way to address mistrust is including people who have not traditionally been in research studies, making more of an effort to include them in vaccine or research studies in general, Evans said.
“The fact that they didn’t actively recruit pregnant women into the vaccine studies makes sense early on, but to prove and be sure it’s safe and effective, inclusion of these groups in trials is important,” Evans said. ”However, so far CDC data show that pregnant women have not experienced more adverse events than the general population.”
Furthermore, while a “good portion” of Black participants in the study eventually got vaccinated, “mistrust in the health care system is a concern,” Evans said.
“That’s a larger issue to be addressed within society in general that goes way beyond this study,” Evans said. “We must continue thinking about how to improve our messaging and addressing the issues around mistrust toward the health care system. This is imperative for COVID-19 and other conditions.”
Reference: “Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine intentions and uptake in a tertiary-care healthcare system: A longitudinal study” by Charlesnika T. Evans, Benjamin J. DeYoung, Elizabeth L. Gray, Amisha Wallia, Joyce Ho, Mercedes Carnethon, Teresa R. Zembower, Lisa R. Hirschhorn and John T. Wilkins, 27 December 2021, Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
DOI: 10.1017/ice.2021.523
Northwestern authors are principal investigator John Wilkins and co-authors Benjamin DeYoung, Elizabeth Gray, Amisha Wallia, Joyce Ho, Mercedes Carnethon, Teresa Zembower and Lisa Hirschhorn.
The research was funded by Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (UL1TR001422) and the Northwestern Memorial Foundation.
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Ironic... In penna they fired so many that they are understaffed... Why? Because so many staff who have been fully vaccinated are ill!
Now the hospital is full of people fully vaccinated...
So,please,pause the propoganda b4 mslsd & and the ChineseNewsNetwork will report you
Go F nk me Not You liars 4,000 aborted babies in the DOD moving numbers. Never tested pregnant women. This figure doesn't include early births and still births. Go to Senator Ron Johnson 5hr. Investigation on all aspects of the tyranny of the Koolaid. Search Robert Kennedy Jr. statement on vaccinating babies. If the vaccine gets on the schedule for kids then evil Pharma gets free blows on any damages per 1986 law including adults. Their business plan for murder.
Antivaxxers are the intellectual equivalent of flat earthers. That is, if the incompetent rantings of the flat earthers could be responsible for the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people.
Biology 101 at your community college is not that expensive and could equip you with the tools necessary to see through the lies secreted by the anti-vax nitwits.
You should change the title to 'Healthcare workers forced to get vaccine or lose their job.'
Not anti vaccine, but what this article fails to mention was the threat of healthcare workers losoing their jobs if vaccination was refused.
Many experts of scientists and doctors have admitted that the vaccine is poisonous and has killed millions of people in Africa, U. S., CANADA, all over the world and trying to keep this information quiet. This is sickening and scary and so called MURDER.
Govwrnment coercion is not acceptance.
Your studies are flawed. The reason Healthcare workers were "changing their minds" had everything to do with the government extortion that they are being subjected to. Get the shot or lose your job.
Of course, them looking their jobs for no Vax didn't have anything to do with it, right?
I love all the comments on here. The reason health care workers changed their minds was because they were made to choose between feeding their families or losing their career, that is what was at stake. I wonder if our government wouldn't have mandated the vaccine (which Biden had said he wasn't) how staffed our hospitals would actually be. But Biden essentially fired all the Heroes that kept this country together pre-vaccine because they didn't comply with big pharmas lobbyists. Thats the story, its a government mandated staff shortage affecting our most vulnerable and weak, our sick and and our dying.
Yeah because their jobs were threatened.