Conoscenze in ambito vaccinale in un campione di lavoratori

The aim of this study is to describe the attitudes towards the vaccination practices in a group of workers, exploring their knowledge of strenghts and weaknesses of vaccinations. An anonymous, structurated questionnaire was administered to 350 randomly selected workers from a private Occupational Medicine Service based in northern Italy. The explored topics retrieves general personal informations (age, sex, country of origin, job title, education ...) encompassing general awareness and attitudes about vaccinations, also exploring the infomation sources. Statistical association between the questionnaire items was explored through chi-square test. 313 subjects fulfilled the questionnaire correctly; 182 of them were Italy-born (mean age 42.1±33.9 years) and 131 were foreign-born (mean age 31.2±12.9 years); 66.9% of them decleared an education equal or higher than secondary school. 64.3% declared to be “in general favorable to vaccinations” (p < 0.0001 for an education equal or higher than secondary school); 54.3% claimed to know “well” or “extremely well” the vaccination practices and policies. The main source of information was represented by television (45.5%), followed by the internet (12.6%) with 9% consulting the General Practitioner or the Occupational Physician. The best-known vaccines were tetanus (74%) and flu (72%) vaccines and 35% and 21% respectively were favorable to receive them. Less than 10% of subjects were aware of vaccines for pneumococcal and meningococcal disease, while 21% referred to known vaccines against AIDS or Plague. 28.5% of subjects considered the vaccination practice as unnecessary and 24.9% believed as “part of pharmaceutical business” (p = 0.004 and p < 0.0001 for the Internet as primary source of information). Despite the small sample size, this study confirms the insufficient knowledge of the vaccination practices and policies in Italy. In general, the healthcare workers (General practitioner and Occupational physician) were considered less reliable than uncontrolled information sources as the Internet or TV.