Original Research Article
Year: 2022 | Month: January-March | Volume: 7 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 135-139
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijshr.20220123
COVID-19 Vaccination-A Cross Sectional Survey on Attitude and Belief of Nurses
Sonali Tarachand Jadhav 1, Kusum Gurung2
1Department of Medical Surgical Nursing, 2Department of Psychiatric Nursing,
Ramaiah Institute of Nursing Education & Research, Bengaluru, India.
Corresponding Author: Kusum Gurung
ABSTRACT
Background: Nurses are the largest part of health care workers involved in direct covid care. This study was intended to identify attitude and beliefs of nurses and nursing students towards covid vaccination immediately after the launch of vaccination drive for health care workers.
Materials and Methods: The study used a cross sectional survey among nurses and nursing students, studying/working in various institutions in Karnataka recruited through snowball sampling. Google survey questionnaire was sent through social media application, Whatsapp.
Results: Twenty per cent of the study participants had already received the first dose of vaccine. Among those who had not received the vaccine, majority of nurses were afraid of the side effects of the vaccine (35%) and 24% wanted to wait and watch. A large number of study participants (38%) expressed that they were ‘not sure’ of the protective effect of vaccine and 10 % believed that vaccine was not safe. Only 4% of the participants said that they would never take the vaccine. Involvement in direct care of patients’ with covid infection was strongly associated with willingness to take the vaccine (0.001, P <0.05).
Conclusions: The results of the study indicate that there is a need for robust information, education and counselling measures that need to be adopted focusing on nurses as frontline health care workers to convince them to take covid-19 vaccine.
Keywords: [COVID-19 vaccine, nurses, attitude, belief]