Work Package 4 (WP4) focuses on the communication between healthcare professionals and ageing adults on vaccinations. By developing strategies to educate and train healthcare professionals and promote the awareness among stakeholders involved in elderly care management, the team aims to raise awareness on the importance of elderly vaccination.
The Healthcare Professional
In the last couple of months, the team specifically focused on the healthcare professional study. Although hampered by capacity issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic, great steps have been taken in the preparation of the network analysis for healthcare professionals. The network analysis will provide input on who do healthcare professionals address when in need of information on new vaccines. An additional questionnaire will be added to validate findings of the interviews, which focused on attitude toward older adult vaccination, information- and educational needs. The data collection is planned to start in July 2021.
Systematic reviews
The qualitative systematic review on healthcare workers’ perceptions and experiences of communicating with people over 50 about vaccination is resubmitted to Cochrane after having received the peer review comments. A quantitative systematic review is in preparation for submission to a scientific journal and will identify various educational interventions for healthcare professionals that are shown to be effective in increasing vaccination rates among older adults.
In June, the team held its third annual meeting. During this meeting, the team looked back at the results as well as at the upcoming years, together with representatives from other work packages.