Primary care providers' views of discussing COVID-19 vaccination with vaccine hesitant patients: A qualitative study.
Kimberly A Fisher, Sonal Singh, Rosalie Torres Stone and 3 others
PMID 38996575WHAT IT FOUND
Most primary care providers found facts and statistics ineffective with staunchly vaccine-hesitant patients.
They reported that expressing empathy and offering the vaccine on-site during the visit were the only approaches they felt actually worked.
Key findings
01Providers reported that facts and statistics were often ineffective, leading them to try other strategies like sharing stories of serious illness or explicitly inducing fear.
02Having the COVID-19 vaccine available for administration in the clinic was consistently cited as the most influential factor in getting hesitant patients vaccinated, as it lowered the effort required to act.
03Very few providers actively tried to empathize with patients' concerns, but those who did found this approach helpful for building trust.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study relied on self-reported strategies, which may not accurately reflect actual communication behaviors during patient visits. Participants were primary care providers from central Massachusetts, which may limit generalizability to other regions or healthcare systems. The study was conducted during a period of high COVID-19 transmission, which may have influenced provider urgency and patient receptiveness differently than in lower-transmission periods. Providers who chose to participate may differ in their attitudes or experiences from those who did not.
Declared interests
The authors did not report specific funding sources or conflicts of interest in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the providers' use of fear-inducing tactics or specific statistical comparisons as evidence-based best practices. The study reports what providers did and how they felt about it, not which strategies were objectively proven to increase vaccination rates in this population.