Turkish Healthcare Workers’ Personal and Parental Attitudes to COVID-19 Vaccination From a Role Modeling Perspective

Abstract

Introduction As in many other countries, healthcare workers (HCWs) have been identified as the priority group for vaccination in Turkey for they are in close contact with not only patients with COVID-19 to whom they provide treatment but also asymptomatic individuals with COVID-19 infection while inoculating COVID-19 vaccines. As a result of this prioritization, they will always be in the limelight and regarded as role models for personal and parental acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines. Methods Turkish healthcare workers (n=1,808) were contacted and invited to fill out an online questionnaire between December 27, 2020, and January 14, 2021, in order to reveal their approaches to COVID-19 vaccines and vaccination. Results Most of the participants had moderate concerns of having severe COVID-19. Anxiety on the adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines was more prevalent in females and among 36- to 50-year-old healthcare workers and less frequent in physicians, nurses, and midwives and in those with a higher level of knowledge about COVID-19 vaccines. Strict anti-vaccination tendency was higher in professional categories other than physicians, nurses, and midwives. Females, physicians, nurses, midwives, healthcare workers aged 51 and over, healthcare workers having children, married healthcare workers, and healthcare workers who use scientific journals and World Health Organization (WHO) announcements as sources of information were more inclined to accept COVID-19 vaccines. The elimination of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in healthcare workers would be possible if people around them, physicians, and ministers or high officials get vaccinated but will persist in 19% of the healthcare workers. More than half of the healthcare workers thought vaccination against COVID-19 should not be mandatory. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the most preferred COVID-19 vaccine (37.3%). The reasons for this preference were the trustworthiness of the country of origin, the manufacturer company, the Turkish origin of its developers, the vaccine's being the first to receive emergency validation, and its non-Indian, non-Russian, and non-Chinese origin. Parental vaccine refusal and hesitancy were present in 15.6% and 31.9% of the healthcare workers, respectively. The mistrust in COVID-19 vaccines among Turkish healthcare workers was directed toward not only pharmaceutical companies but also health authorities and academicians because of their unconvincing, conflicting, or vague statements and toward certain countries known for their production of low-quality merchandise in the past. Conclusion The parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy of 32% of the healthcare workers is unacceptably high for role modeling against anti-vaccine movement and should be diminished by implementing necessary measures as soon as possible.