Attitudes of healthcare professionals towards COVID-19 vaccine and related factors: A systematic review

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: Healthcare workers have priority among risky groups accepted as candidates for early vaccination. Therefore, it is important to consider health professionals' attitudes towards COVID-19 vaccination to better address barriers to widespread vaccination. The purpose of this systematic review is to examine the attitudes of healthcare professionals towards the COVID-19 vaccine and related factors. MATERIAL AND METHOD: For the articles published between January 01, 2020 - February 31, 2022, 6 databases were searched and 1161 studies were reached. As a result of the evaluations, 10 studies were included in the systematic review. 9 of the studies are cross-sectional and 1 of them is descriptive study type. For quality assessment, a 9-item Checklist for Descriptive, Cross-sectional, and Relation-Searching Studies from the Joanna Briggs Institute MAStARI Critical Assessment Tools (JBI-MAStARI) was used. High-quality studies with an average or higher methodological quality score were included in the systematic review. PRISMA flow chart was followed in the selection process of the studies. RESULTS: Vaccine acceptance among healthcare workers varies between 59.0% and 93.7%. Factors such as male gender, medical profession, advanced age, past influenza vaccination history, and presence of chronic disease were found to be associated with vaccine acceptance. Factors such as doubt about the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, safety concerns, and fear of unknown side effects of the vaccine were associated with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. CONCLUSIONS: Confidence-building interventions and tailored communication strategies are needed, including personalized training to change the ambiguous attitudes of healthcare professionals, to increase vaccine uptake and cope with the multifaceted impact of infection.