2021-2022 Immunize.io UBC Vaccine Education Study
Assessing the impact of advanced vaccine education on students’ understanding, confidence and preparedness in becoming future immunization providers
Authors: Ajit Johal, Mark Zhou, Aamir Ladak
Introduction:
With community pharmacists emerging as prominent immunization providers, there is an increased need for additional training in this area. The primary objective of this pre- post questionnaire study was to evaluate the impact of a series of webinars on advanced vaccine education on the understanding, confidence, and knowledge of undergraduate PharmD students.
Methods:
A 7 question, web-based survey was administered to third year PharmD students at the University of British Columbia, prior to and immediately after attending the 6-part webinar education series from November 2021 to March 2022. The pre- and post- survey data were analyzed using SPSS 26. A two-tailed paired samples t-test was conducted to examine whether the mean difference of each question before and after the educational intervention was significantly different from zero.
Results:
In a group of predominantly third year pharmacy students 63 completed the pre-survey questionnaire, 27 students completed the post-survey questionnaire, and 12 students completed the vaccine education series and post-survey. Pre-survey questionnaire results showed significant knowledge gaps in the areas of patient assessment, scope of practice, immunization assessment, and public vaccine programs. After the educational webinar series, students showed significantly higher knowledge and confidence across all domains pertaining to community vaccination practice.
Conclusions:
Considerable knowledge gaps exist for graduating community pharmacists in vaccine education. Canadian pharmacy school curriculums currently address only technical administration of vaccinations and module type therapeutics on vaccine preventable diseases. Pharmacy students will benefit from integrated education focusing on addressing vaccine hesitancy, immunization status assessment, jurisdictional routine immunization programs, navigating scope of practice, coverage and reimbursement. Furthermore, communities may also benefit from frontline healthcare providers who are highly trained to address their vaccination status and related concerns.
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