Evaluation of the motivational interviewing technique in pregnant women who had vaccine hesitancy about the administration of childhood vaccines

This study was conducted to assess the effect of the motivational interviewing technique on pregnant women who had vaccine hesitancy about the administration of childhood vaccines. An interventional study design with a control group was employed. The study was conducted at Balıkesir Atatürk City Hospital between July 2022 and February 2024. A total of 408 pregnant women with at least ≥28 weeks of gestation who presented to Atatürk City Hospital participated in our study. Sixty-nine pregnant women (16.9%) participating in the study were found to have vaccine hesitancy according to the Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines. The motivational interviewing technique was applied four sessions per week from 28. weeks of gestation to the intervention group (n: 25). No intervention was applied to the control group. The scale was applied two months after birth to intervention group and the control group and the vaccination cases of babies were interrogated. Regarding the intra-group vaccine hesitancy comparisons, Wilcoxon signed-rank test was employed to compare the Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines score distributions of the intervention group and the control group). The Mann-Whitney U test was utilized to make the inter-group comparisons. The mean score of the intervention group on the Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines was 55.16±1.30 before the intervention and 21.96±2.66 following it. A statistically significant difference was found between the mean scale scores of the intervention group obtained during the antenatal period and following the intervention (p<0.05). The mean score of the control group on the Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines was 54.71±1.35 during the pregnancy period and 38.43±3.60 in the second month after birth. It was found that the vaccine hesitancy score decreased by 16.28 points two months after birth, which was statistically significant (p<0.05). The mean Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines score in the third trimester of pregnancy was 0.45 points higher in the intervention group than in the control group. When the scores of the intervention and control groups on the Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines obtained in the prenatal period were compared, no statistically significant difference was found between the two groups (p>0.05). The comparison of the Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines scores belonging to the second month after birth showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups (p<0.005). In conclusion, the motivational interviewing intervention reduced vaccine hesitancy by 33.2 points. The Parents Attitudes About Childhood Vaccines score was 16.47 points lower in the intervention group, where the motivational interviewing technique was applied, than in the control group.