Factors influencing individuals, their beliefs about vaccines and vaccination, hesitancy, trust, and complacency have been well studied. Patient-centred healthcare provider education or preparation for talking about vaccines has not received much attention. To close this gap, a team of clinicians, other care providers and patient/family advisors in Calgary, Alberta developed an online virtual simulation game toolkit to prepare healthcare providers to be more knowledgeable and comfortable having vaccine conversations with patients. The effectiveness of these vaccine conversations also needed to be measured. This paper describes the co-design of a survey for patients to evaluate these vaccine conversations in clinical practice. A staged approach was used to develop the patient evaluation survey. A rapid literature review was conducted (Stage 1) to determine what, if any measures may be useful to begin discussions. A Survey Development Working group of patients, family members and healthcare providers co-designed the survey (Stage 2). In Stage 3, the survey was pilot tested online by patients and discussed in ‘think aloud’ sessions with three different patient groups and one with diverse healthcare providers. Survey responses were only used as context for the discussions. Descriptive qualitative analysis was applied to the discussion transcripts. The 13 patients who completed the online survey were diverse by age, gender, income, and types of vaccine conversations they experienced. All survey questions were responded to without difficulty. Generally, the nine patients and seven healthcare providers who participated in the ‘think aloud’ discussion groups indicated strong support for the survey to effectively evaluate the one or more vaccine conversations which patients would have with various healthcare providers. Both groups felt that patient responses would be useful to inform healthcare providers. Minor changes were suggested but overall survey format, length and questions were felt to be good. The co-designed patient evaluation survey accompanying the online care provider toolkit will be of value in guiding healthcare providers to improve their vaccine conversations. The survey requires broader implementation with different patient groups. Additional studies are needed to measure patients’ perspectives regarding the vaccine conversations they have with their care providers.
Burns et al. (Fri,) studied this question.