Assessment Of Healthcare Workers’ Knowledge About Vaccines In Al-Najaf Primary Health Care Centers

Abstract

Background: Immunization performed an important role in enhancing global health through decreased transmission of infectious diseases. Numerous aspects within healthcare facilities including supervision, cold-chain management, immunization session procedure, and reporting, must be thoroughly examined to ensure the effective delivery of immunization service. The study aims to evaluate the knowledge of healthcare workers working in the immunization unit in randomly selected primary healthcare centers at Najaf Province. For subjects and method, a cross-sectional research descriptive study took place at 26 healthcare facilities at six districts of Najaf, by using simple random sampling. The study involved a total of 143 healthcare personnel, including 122 healthcare workers working in the immunization units and 21 doctors. A questionnaire was used to evaluate the vaccine knowledge of healthcare workers. Data collecting began on December 2^nd, 2022, and ended on March 2^nd, 2023. The statistical program Statistical Package for Social Sciences/version 26 was used to examine and achieve the desired findings. Analytic statistics of Chi-square test (X2) was used to establish the statistically significant relationship between variables. Results: The study's findings revealed that healthcare workers have moderate degrees of overall vaccine knowledge (mean of score =2.23). Furthermore, a statistically significant link was discovered between the place of residence of healthcare workers and their knowledge (P=0.007), indicating that those live-in urban regions had greater knowledge levels than those living in rural areas. Conclusion: Healthcare workers possess good knowledge regarding vaccine types, doses, and schedules, moderate knowledge about contraindications and causes of postponement, and their knowledge was substantially associated with their place of residence.