“ . . . schools reported immunization rates ranging from 19% to 100%, with an average of 91%. . . . Alarmingly, one school reported that none of its students had been vaccinated.”
This year’s measles and mumps outbreaks are a reminder that many of us still think of vaccination as only a personal health practice. We forget that it is also something we do as a member of a community. When a vaccine-preventable disease starts to circulate, every vaccinated or otherwise immune person is a transmission dead end. It’s as though the virus skids to a stop in front of us, unable to pass through the closed door of our immunity to continue to replicate and spread disease.
In “Countering Vaccine Misinformation” in this month’s AJN, Lindsey Danielson and colleagues discuss vaccines, health literacy, and the ease with which misinformation can proliferate on social media. They emphasize the importance of understanding different kinds of opposition to vaccination:
“Vaccine hesitant describes a person who is hesitant about vaccines but still receptive to scientific evidence, while vaccine denier refers to a person who is against vaccination, denies scientific evidence, and uses rhetorical arguments to give the false appearance of legitimate debate.”
Countering vaccine misinformation: what can nurses do?
The authors offer several recommendations for countering vaccine misinformation, as well as a link to a health literacy toolkit, and point out that our audience is the general public, not the vaccine denier.
“The goal,” they write, “is to facilitate the public’s resilience against misinformation and to support vaccine-hesitant people in accepting immunization.”
As a Registered Nurse, we have the obligation to accept and advocate for vaccine uptake in our communities. It is high time that prominent nursing organizations take a pro-active stance towards nurses who display ambivalence or outright anti-vaccinations stances. How can we expect the communities, who often have minimal health knowledge, to actively protect themselves and other members of the community if nurses are tearing down these protections.
This is an unethical position which endangers the lives of the communities we pledged and swore to protect. It is necessary that state and national boards of nursing take a proactive stance on this topic. We cannot have the most trusted profession within the medical field undermining our populations health.
Gregory Briddick, BSN, RN, CCRN, TCRN