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Barriers and facilitators to COVID-19 vaccine uptake among Australian health professional students during the pandemic: a nationwide study
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Barriers and facilitators to COVID-19 vaccine uptake among Australian health professional students during the pandemic: a nationwide study

Yingyan Chen, Roslyn Prichard, Matt Mason, Marion Tower, Peta-Anne Zimmerman, Vanessa Sparke, Janice Layh, Ahmed M Mehdi and Frances Fengzhi Lin
Journal of public health policy, Vol.44, pp.400-414
09/2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-023-00422-9
PMID: 37330562
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Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0,  Open Access
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Published (Version of record)CC BY V4.0,  Open

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Abstract

COVID-19 Risk perception Vaccine uptake Vaccine hesitancy Health professional students
Using a cross-sectional online survey we investigated knowledge, attitudes, and risk perception about COVID-19 vaccination and identified factors influencing vaccine uptake among Australian health professional students from October 2021 to January 2022. We analysed data from 1114 health professional students from 17 Australian universities. Most participants were enrolled in nursing programs (n = 958, 86.8%), and 91.6% (n = 858) of the participants received COVID-19 vaccination. Approximately 27% believed COVID-19 was no more serious than seasonal influenza and that they had a low risk of acquiring COVID-19. Nearly 20% disagreed that COVID-19 vaccines in Australia were safe and perceived they were at higher-risk of acquiring COVID infection than the general population. Higher-risk perception viewing vaccination as their professional responsibility, and vaccine mandate strongly predicted vaccination behaviour. Participants consider COVID-19 information from health professionals, government websites, and World Health Organization as the most trusted information sources. The findings highlight that healthcare decision-makers and university administrators need to monitor students' hesitancy with vaccination to improve students' promotion of the vaccination to the general population.

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