The General Council of Nurses (CGE) and the National Association of Nursing and Vaccines (ANENVAC) have carried out a poll to nearly 3,000 nurses to discover the adult perception of vaccination in Spain and implement tools that help improve vaccination coverage in this segment of population.
This survey highlights that 1 in 4 say they don’t have access to vaccination records, so they don’t know what vaccines their patients have received. This problem is especially seen in the private sector, in hospitals and nursing homes, and prevents nurses from being more proactive in recommending the most appropriate vaccines in each case.
Nurses working in public primary care were the most satisfied with the access to the registry, the means and the availability of an adequate space to carry out the vaccination.
“We need to further strengthen coordination between primary care and hospital and social health settings,” said the secretary general of the General Nursing Council, Diego Aiuso. He further stressed that it is important for nurses to know the vaccination status of the population they care for in order to actively recommend corresponding vaccines.
“Many adults are unaware that in addition to the flu and the coronavirus, there are other vaccines that can protect them from potentially very serious diseases. Nurses are able to lead and develop successful macro-campaigns,” explains Ayuso.
Severity of the disease
The study also found that the vast majority of nurses are aware of the seriousness of life-threatening diseases (meningitis, pneumonia, tetanus, influenza and shingles) that can be prevented through vaccination and the importance of immunization. The potential of nurses to actively recommend vaccines is revealed by their high perception of risk and their close contact with patients.
The perception of gravity is slightly lower among nurses working in nursing homes where the risks associated with these pathologies are greater.
Vaccines
The survey also asked nurses whether they think they should be able to indicate and prescribe unfunded but recommended vaccines. 3 out of 4 nurses agreed to take on this competency which will improve vaccination coverage as it would speed up referral and access, according to CGE and ANENVAC.
80% of nurses believe the impact of the pandemic on public perception of vaccines has been positive, and two in three say it has helped improve vaccination coverage for adults.
Nearly 95% of nurses who participated in the survey agreed that vaccination in adults is just as important as in childhood. For Diego Ayuso, this makes nurses “key professionals to bring this message to the population”.
92.5% believe it is important for health professionals to update their immunization program following the recommendations of health authorities and scientific societies.
94.6% of respondents said they considered themselves, as nurses, professionals who should actively recommend vaccination. Furthermore, eight out of ten say that the population sees the nurse as the professional figure of reference in everything related to vaccination.
conclusions
The Prime Minister, Florentino Pérez Raya, explains that the goal is to detect in which areas it is possible to “develop and implement tools that contribute to the training and updating of nursing professionals and which translate into an improvement in vaccination coverage for adults” . .
For his part, the president of ANENVAC, José Antonio Forcada, stressed that “the vaccination culture that permeates pediatric nurses must also grow and be transferred to nurses who work with adults and in all fields of nursing activity. Prevention and vaccinations are a key part of the care provided by nurses,” he concludes.
