Vaccination in aged patients: breaking barriers. The impact of educational programs

Abstract

Background. Prevention of the diseases is the cornerstone of medicine. Preventing of the diseases improves the quality and life expectancy, and also reduces the costs for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The main preventive measures include maintaining a healthy lifestyle (proper nutrition and regular exercise) and vaccination. Purpose: to study the influence of distance learning programs on the knowledge of doctors about the vaccination. Materials and methods: a distance learning cycle of lectures was conducted on the vaccination of elderly patients. Before and after the course of lectures, an anonymous voluntary survey of the course participants was conducted. The questionnaires included questions for free completion, questions for assessing attitudes on a scale from 0 to 10 (where 0 strongly disagree and 10 strongly agree) and multiple choices questions. Physicians were informed before the survey that the data would be subsequently analyzed and published. Results: 556 people took part in the first stage of the survey, of which 469 (84.3%) were women. 328 people took part in the second stage of the survey, of which 271 (82.6%) were women. The experience of doctors was on average 27±11,8 years, specialists from 72 specialties took part. Before the course of the lecture, on average, the opinion of doctors on vaccination was 8.7±0.1 out of 10, after the course of the lecture it became 9.1±0.1 out of 10 (p < 0.05). Before the start of the course, on average, doctors assessed their knowledge at 6.9±0.1, after the end of the course 7.7±0.1 (p < 0.05). After a course of lectures, 95% of the respondents answered that they would recommend vaccination to their older patients and relatives. Conclusion: on-line learning course of lectures has been shown to be an effective method of improving the quality of doctors' knowledge about the importance and safety of vaccination of people of older and senile age.