Evaluation of awareness of vaccine responsibility of final grade students of three medical faculties

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: Doctors play an important role in the vaccination of the society. The education medical students receive about vaccines is valuable in enabling them to fulfill this role. This study was carried out with the aim of determining the knowledge, attitude, behavior and awareness of the future physicians about vaccines and vaccination, which are considered as an important public health problem today. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Our cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted with 207 final grade medical students who accepted to participate in the study between July and October 2020 at three medical faculties. Data were collected through an online questionnaire consisting of 32 questions including sociodemographic characteristics and information, attitudes, and behavior questions about vaccines. Statistical analyzes were made with the SPSS v.21 statistical program and p <0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS: Of the 207 students participating in the study, 111 (53.6%) are female and 96 (46.4%) are male. The average age and standard deviation of the participants was found to be 24.94±1.36 years. 18.4% of the participants stated that they were vaccinated against seasonal influenza. 41.5% of the participants stated that the applicants' questions about the aluminum in vaccines and 40.1% could answer the questions about the thiomersal in the vaccines. Those who stated that they have some hesitations about the current vaccines applied in our country constitute 26.1% of the participants. CONCLUSION: As a result of this study, it is seen that medical faculty students do not feel sufficiently ready for effective communication with individuals with vaccine hesitations. In addition, some of the students have hesitations about the vaccines used in our country. The use of local vaccines will also help to alleviate students' hesitations about vaccines. Increasing the content of vaccination-related courses in students' education programs is important to increase both individual and social immunization rates.