THE RIGHT WORDS MIGHT MAKE DIFFERENCE IN INFLUENCING THE VACCINATION HESITANCY AMONG PARENTS OF NEWBORNS HOSPITALIZED IN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT.
Abstract
Background
Taking into account the nowadays noticeable progress in the care of extremely low birth weight babies and newborns in asphyxia, their survival increased significantly in our country. The vaccination is a logical step aiming the protection of newborns from infections that can be fatal in their childhood. A study we performed in 2015 among 46 infants who required weeks of intensive care in neonatal period, showed that 23 infants were yet to be vaccinated at 1.8 months, two main reasons being the reticence of their family physician or parental refusal. The Pneumococcal vaccine is available in Moldova since 2013.
Methods
Long hospitalization in neonatal intensive-care-unit offers multiple opportunities to interact with parents. We evaluated, throughout verbal communication, if the use of some words/expressions would be of a greater help in enhancing the acceptance among parents to comply to vaccination. The changing in attitude(pro-vaccination) of parents(couples) of 30 newborn was assesed at the discharge.
Results
21 parents(mother&father) became non-reticent for vaccinating their babies. Some of the expressions/words proved to have a positive impact on parents in support of vaccination are cited: "vaccine protects against 13 infectious disease", "otitis", "meningitis", "infected toddler", " vaccine manufacturer", whilst less impactful being the use of words as "pneumonia", "weak immunity", "Ministry of Health recommendation".
Conclusions
When some specific words/expressions are used in a verbal interaction between medical staff & parents, the long hospitalization in neonatal intensive may offer a good opportunity to influence parents' vaccine hesitant perception, However, as other studies repeatedly shown that the use of factual information in communication has little if not negative effect on parental hesitancy – the conclusions of this study (based on a small sample of parents whose newborn was hospitalized during the neonatal period) may not apply to other groups.
