Healthcare providers’ awareness, attitudes, beliefs, and practices surrounding pharmacist-administered vaccination: Insights after a two-year intervention

Despite the expanding scope of pharmacists' practice to include immunization, vaccine coverage among adults in Canada remains below national targets. We conducted online surveys of healthcare providers (HCPs) that provide vaccines in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada, to determine their perceptions about pharmacists as immunizers. A validated and pre-tested cross-sectional survey was distributed to pharmacists, physicians, and nurses via professional associations, health authorities, and social media. Of the 223 respondents, 41.3% were pharmacists, 24.7% nurses and 34.1% physicians. Pharmacists described experiencing more social (81.0%) and professional (62.0%) pressure to administer vaccines, as compared to nurses (58.2% and 27.9%) and physicians (60.0% and 9.1%) (<i>p</i> = .004 and <i>p</i> < .001). While pharmacists were well-informed and motivated to vaccinate, they faced logistical barriers including working in a solo practice setting (58.9%) and lack of tools to identify unvaccinated individuals (76.0%), as compared to nurses (20.0%, 51.7%) and physicians (26.6%, 25.0%) (<i>p </i>< .001). Support for pharmacists' role in administering vaccines for different age groups was highest among pharmacists (88.0% for adults, 88.0% for 5-18-year-olds, and 62.7% for children <5 y), followed by nurses (71.4%, 57.1%, and 46.9%), and physicians (60.0%, 47.1%, and 28.6%) (<i>p</i> ≤ .001). Our findings suggest that pharmacists' roles as immunizers may be facilitated by policies supporting: a pharmacist-accessible vaccine registry, adequate compensation and staffing support, specialized training for vaccinating young children, and advocacy from physicians and nurses. Research into pharmacists' evolving professional identity and how their growing roles as vaccinators are perceived by other HCPs is recommended.