Studying awareness and attitude to vaccination in the context of professional training of future pharmacists

Abstract

The aim of the work is to conduct a comparative analysis of the attitude of higher education applicants in the specialties “Pharmacy”, “Biotechnology and Bioengineering” of the second (master’s) and third (doctor of philosophy) levels in different countries of the world (including Ukraine) towards the vaccination procedure for children and adults.

Materials and methods. The research methods were an anonymous survey using the E-survey, developed by the authors (20 questions), comparative analysis, statistical methods, and modeling. The research material is the respondents’ answers to the E-survey questions.

Results. The generalized profile of the respondents has been studied. It was found that in both experimental groups, most of the respondents (≈60 %) were young female people 17–21 years old (94.0 % of Ukrainian and 50.0 % of residents of other countries). The vast majority of domestic students (78.2 %) were originally from peasant families. The ranking of respondents by parental status was quite expected on the basis of their early age qualification. Only 1.2 % of Ukrainian respondents and 10.0 % of foreigners had children or reported pregnancy. It turned out that the decision of consent/refusal of vaccination was a conscious choice of the vast majority of students of both experimental groups. Thus, foreigners enter the ranks of students almost completely vaccinated from the COVID-19 (95.0 %), this indicator is also high for domestic respondents (74.3 %). Most of the respondents preferred the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, with almost 58 % of foreign respondents during the Deadline period (the indicator for Ukrainian respondents was approximately 4 %). A comparative analysis of the study on awareness, beliefs and relevant decisions of the respondents in the future, which will be made by them, differ significantly in representatives of different experimental groups. The full readiness of foreigners (100.0 %) for vaccination of their own children according to the vaccination calendar contracts with uncertainty (6.5 %) and a convinced refusal of vaccination (3.0 %) of future domestic specialists of pharmaceutical specialties.

Conclusions. The results of a comparative analysis of the distribution of respondents’ answers to the vaccination procedure and vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 in particular by quantitative-quality methods are presented. The recognition of the need for the vast majority of respondents for additional knowledge about vaccines and vaccination procedures under the conditions of its professional conduct, a comparative analysis of this problem in general indicates the need for certain changes in the educational and educational process of preparation of pharmacists and biotechnologists of these educational and qualification levels.