Knowledge and healthcare professionals' perceptions of influenza vaccination in the Qassim region, Saudi Arabia (2019-2020)

Influenza is associated with a substantial economic burden owing to the extensive immediate and circuitous medicinal service costs at the individual and institutional levels. We aimed to evaluate healthcare workers' perceptions of the influenza vaccination in the Qassim region in Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study was conducted at selected hospitals from November to March 2020, in which healthcare workers completed a self-administered questionnaire. Of 327 participants, most were equally distributed between the ages 18-30 and 31-45 years (42.8% each), with 57.5% female and 42.5% male. Both Saudi (47.7%) and non-Saudi participants (52.3%) were included. The majority were physicians (29.7%), pharmacists (28.1%), and nurses (27.5%). Overall, 60.9% had good knowledge, 89% had positive perceptions, and 10.7% had negative perceptions. The primary reason for not getting vaccinated was a concern for complications. Moreover, 20.8% had never previously been vaccinated. Knowledge was positively correlated with nationality, educational level, and perception (p= .002,p= .047, andp= .021, respectively). Perceptions were significantly correlated with nationality (p=.009). Furthermore, 24.5% completely disagreed with compulsory vaccination and believe it would not improve coverage. Once fitted using a multinomial regression model, an r-square value of 0.026 indicated that nationality and history of previous vaccination significantly contributed to negative perceptions. We concluded that most healthcare workers had good knowledge and positive perceptions, and more than a third of the participants adhered to seasonal vaccination. Saudi patients and those who had never been vaccinated were more likely to have negative perceptions.