Healthcare provider awareness, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors regarding the role of pharmacists as immunizers

Abstract

We explored perceptions of healthcare providers in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick about pharmacists as immunizers. Pharmacists' scopes of practice are increasingly broadening to include immunization, and providers and policymakers may find meaning in the lessons we learned. Invitations to participate in our online survey were circulated by professional associations, health authorities, and in social media posts. A total of 204 healthcare providers completed our survey, of whom 59.3% were pharmacists, 17.6% were nurses, and 23.0% were physicians. Nurses (30.6%) and physicians (34.0%) experienced fewer logistical barriers to immunizing compared to pharmacists, 71.1% of whom identified practice logistics as a determinant in offering vaccines to patients (p < .001). Pharmacists were most supportive of the expansion of their own scope of practice to include the provision of vaccines to adults (95.9%) and children as young as five years (92.6%) compared to nurses (72.2% and 69.4%) and physicians (61.7% and 40.4%) (p < .001). Diversity of opinion was evident even among pharmacists about whether they should be permitted to vaccinate children younger than five years. Nurse and physician respondents had lower odds of thinking pharmacists have enough training to vaccinate (p < .001), that vaccines should be given in a pharmacy (p < .001), and of supporting the expansion of pharmacists' scope of practice (p < .001) than pharmacists did in the multivariable analyses. Pharmacists are well-positioned and willing to vaccinate and generally have support from their nurse and physician peers, but logistical challenges and interprofessional complexities persist as barriers to optimizing immunization by pharmacists.

Keywords: Immunization; health knowledge, attitudes, practice; pharmacists; public health; scope of practice; vaccination; vaccination coverage.

Figure 1.

Healthcare providers’ personal vaccination behavior. Bars indicate the number and proportion of pharmacists, nurses, and physicians who self-reported receiving all adult vaccines, the influenza vaccine, the meningococcal ACWY vaccine, the meningococcal B vaccine, and the pertussis vaccine.

Figure 2.

Sources of vaccine-related information. Bars indicate the number and proportion of pharmacists, nurses, and physicians who identified each source of vaccine-related information in a select-all-that-apply question.