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Evaluation of knowledge thought and attitudes of Health Services Vocational School students regarding COVID-19 vaccine applications

In the fight against the pandemic, vaccines play an effective role in preventing diseases by producing a long-term immunological memory. For a variety of reasons, vaccine hesitancy can be observed among healthcare workers and students enrolled at health-related programs of universities. Inevitably, the students at Health Services Vocational School (HSVS) who have the potential to be employed as auxiliary health workers in near future will undertake significant duties in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and fighting with its effects. Therefore, thoroughly studying the reasons for vaccine hesitancy of these groups that serve as a reference point for society is important to increase vaccination rates. This study aims to evaluate the knowledge, views, and attitudes that the students of HSVS have about COVID-19 vaccination practices. This research was conducted by using an online survey that was comprised of 17-questions and applied between 25 July 2021 15 August 2021 to 660 students who were aged 18-25 years and enrolled at the programs of HSVS of universities in Istanbul, Turkey. In the period when the survey was applied to the participant students, 27.0% of the participants said that they already got the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine whilst 32.9% of them told that they already got the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. While 26.7% of the participants stated that they did not get the COVID-19 vaccine yet, 13.5% of them said that they did not think of getting the COVID-19 vaccine. The participants asserted that they acquired their current information about the benefits and side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines mostly from printed & visual media (21.52%) and social media (21.52%). On the other hand, it was found that the students of HSVS who were anxious about being infected with the COVID-19 disease were worried mostly about the health of their families (52.12%). According to the results of this study, it is discerned that the vaccination rate of the students of HSVS was a bit lower than the average vaccination rate for Turkey and the vaccination rate for Istanbul province. It cannot be denied that acquiring the current information about the vaccine mostly from the channels of social media and printed & visual media affected these results. Hence, ensuring that these individuals who are still in the learning stage participate in scientific platforms to be organized on this topic particularly at the higher education institutions where they are enrolled is important for them to acquire information from more sound channels about this issue which is also of concern to public health.