Investigation of the knowledge and attitudes of parents with hospitalized children towards vaccine

AIM: In this research, vaccination knowledge and attitudes of parents whose children are hospitalized were examined in order to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases and increase the vaccination rate. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The research is a cross-sectional study. SPSS 22.0 package program was used to evaluate the data to examine the attitudes of parents with hospitalized children between the ages of 0-6 about vaccination. In the analysis of the data, number percentage distribution and descriptive statistics were performed to describe demographic characteristics. The suitability of the data for normal distribution was checked with the Kolmogorov Simirnov normality test (Vaccine Attitude Scale K-S: 0.090; p=0.000). Since the data did not show normal distribution, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis test analysis were used. Dr. Parents of children aged 0-6 participated at Behçet Uz Children's Hospital between October 2023 and December 2023. Participants were randomly selected. 'Introductory Information Form' and 'Vaccine Attitude Scale' were used to collect data. Cronbach alpha coefficients; Vaccine acceptance subscale 0,928 – Side effect subscale 0,750 – Vaccine hesitancy subscale 0,764 – Vaccine attitude scale 0,768 RESULTS: 50.8% of the parents say their baby's gender is male, the average age of their baby is 2.50±1.88, 56.2% say their baby is 2 years old and above, 90% say their baby's body mass index is low, 35% say 7 of them have only one child, 95.7% of them have a nuclear family type, 49.5% live in the city center, 71.4% have an income equal to their expenses, 100% are mothers, the average age of the mothers is below It was determined that 30.42±5.13, 53% were 30 years old or younger, 63% were unemployed, and 35.1% were university graduates. While 93.8% of the families were vaccinated regularly, 6.2% did not. The reason for regular vaccination is that 52.3% of the families stated that it protects them from diseases, 39.8% stated that vaccines are useful, 3.8% stated that everyone gets vaccinated, 3.2% stated that they do so because vaccinations are compulsory, and 1% stated that they do so for another reason. 93.8% of the parents reported that the baby/child was vaccinated regularly, 52.3% of the answers to the question of the reason for regular vaccination were to protect the baby/child from diseases, and 46% of the answers to the question of the people who influenced the decision not to vaccinate the baby/child regularly. 9 of them were themselves, 62.8% of the answers given to the question of why they refused to vaccinate the baby/child regularly were fear of other problems related to vaccines in the future, 91.4% did not think that vaccines had side effects/harmful effects, they did not have knowledge about vaccines. 55.6% of the answers given to the question of access to the vaccine were healthcare professionals, 76.2% stated that healthcare professionals provided information about the vaccine when they did not want to be vaccinated, 62.1% of the parents who received information about the vaccine found the information sufficient, 65.4% stated that It was found that people want to get more detailed information about vaccination/immunization from health institutions. The coefficients of all items under the factors were found to be statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, it was observed that mothers mostly vaccinated their children fully. As a result, it has been shown that mothers perceive that immunization is important and that they are sensitive about protecting the health of their children.