Part of Chapman team, Paolo Tristian Domingo, Helen Vu, Rosa Le and Nikki Derleth, with their poster.
Part of Chapman team, Paolo Tristian Domingo, Helen Vu, Rosa Le and Nikki Derleth, with their poster.
Background
While pediatric (≥ 3 years) and adult vaccine administration may not differ in terms of administration technique or anatomical location, literature suggests lower pharmacist comfort when administering pediatric vaccines. We aim to evaluate California community pharmacy-based immunizers comfort in administering pediatric vaccines, determine barriers and demographic characteristics that might influence comfort and identify the most commonly pharmacy administered pediatric vaccines.
Methodology
An anonymous, cross-sectional survey of pharmacists, intern pharmacists and pharmacy technicians was developed and distributed electronically (Qualtrics) to professional pharmacy organizations and pharmacy school mailing lists between November 2022 to February 2023. Participants ranked comfort level vaccinating individuals by age category and selected barriers influencing selected comfort level.
Results
A total of 168 participants (96 intern pharmacists; 72 pharmacists) completed the survey. Due to the small sample size (n = 5), technicians were not assessed. A shift in comfort from a majority being comfortable to a majority being uncomfortable occurred for the age range 5 to 10 with intern pharmacists less comfortable vaccinating this age range. Intern pharmacists were also less comfortable vaccinating patients under the age of 3. The most prominent barrier affecting comfort during vaccination was age-related behavioral characteristics (crying, combativeness and restlessness) for all individuals. Influenza (36.1%) and COVID-19 (31.4%) vaccines were the most common vaccines administered by pharmacy-based immunizers to children. Lack of responses to demographic questions prevented the exploration of demographic influence on comfort during vaccination.
Conclusion
Pharmacy-based immunizers’ training should focus on awareness and techniques to handle potential pediatric behaviors during immunization rather than just technical differences in administration of vaccines, especially to those less than 3 years of age, to increase pharmacists’ and interns’ comfort with vaccine administration.
