Knowledge and Opinions of Healthcare Professionals about the Meningococcus, Rotavirus and Human Papillomavirus Vaccines.

Objective: This descriptive cross-sectional study aims to determine the knowledge and opinions of the healthcare professionals (physicians, nurses, midwives, and health officers) working in pediatric-neonatal clinics and intensive care units about meningococcemia, rotavirus, and human papillomavirus (HPV) infections/vaccines. Methodology: The sample of this descriptive cross-sectional study was composed of the healthcare professionals working in pediatric/neonatal clinics of the three university hospitals located in different cities of Turkey. Data were collected with a 33 questions survey prepared by the researchers. The significance was accepted to be at the level of p<0.05. Results: A total of 222 individuals, including nurses (68.0%), physicians (26.1%), midwives (3.2%), and health officers (2.7%), participated in the study. The mean score of the healthcare professionals' knowledge about invasive meningococcal disease, rotavirus, and HPV vaccines was 16.73±4.93. When comparing the mean scores in terms of educational status, the mean scores of those having a doctoral degree were statistically significantly higher (p<0.05). 86.5% of the healthcare professionals thought that the rotavirus (86.5%), meningococcal (90.5%), and HPV vaccine (75.2%) should be included in the national vaccination schedule. Conclusions: Consequently, the healthcare professionals had a lack of knowledge about invasive meningococcal disease, rotavirus, and HPV vaccines, but they believed that these three vaccines should be included in the national vaccination schedule. Health care professionals need to know about vaccination, an essential subject for making the applications correctly and having a word in current improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]