Public health nurses' demographic factors and level of awareness as determinants to safe vaccine administration

Abstract

It was reported that vaccine misconceptions, lack of knowledge, and inaccurate conceptions were relatively common to healthcare workers. The study aims to assess public health nurses' level of awareness on safe vaccine administration. This descriptive-correlational study was conducted in the 44 community health centers in the municipalities of Lanao Del Sur Province, Philippines. This includes 200 public health nurses who were selected using proportionate sampling. The self-made survey questionnaire was adopted from the Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) about safe immunization practices. It utilized SPSS version 24 software to statistically compute for frequency and percentage distribution, mean, standard deviation, and Chi-square test. Most of the public health nurses as respondents of the study are females, Bachelor degree holders in Nursing, have 1-3 years of experience, and lastly have not attended any seminar/training regarding safe vaccine administration. Most of the public health nurses in Lanao Del Sur Province have a high level of awareness of safe vaccine administration (x=2.86, SD±47.23). A significant relationship was found between a number of pieces of training and vaccine transportation (r2 6.065; p=0.005) and education and vaccine preparation (r2 7.407; p=0.025) among public health nurses. A regular staff training course is highly recommended to improve the public health nurses' level of knowledge about immunization.