Edinburgh Napier University

  Aims: This initial six month study was instigated by Patricia McIntosh and funded by Edinburgh Napier University. The work involved collaboration between NHS Lothian and Edinburgh Napier University which aimed to explore the views and experiences of parents and health professionals in Edinburgh for childhood immunisation services. This aim of this was ultimately to provide greater understandings of facilitating immunisation uptake.
Methodology: Qualitative methodology was used to collect data about parent and professional views of the current services across Edinburgh. A purposive sample was used which included semi-structured interviews with four parents and focus group discussions with seven practice nurses and seven health visitors and two community staff nurses. Interviews and focus groups were recorded and thematic analysis was used to identify the main themes in the data.
Outcome/Result: The findings highlighted three themes relevant for immunisation services including lay health beliefs held by parents and professionals which contravened health advice; the importance of communication between professionals and parents and between staff and the impact of wider organisational influences for effective delivery and safety. Early negative health experiences, in terms of trust, appeared to influence later decisions for immunisation amongst parents.
Conclusion: The significance of early parental health experiences for the potential impact on later immunisation decisions was highlighted from this work. This has implications for the national HPV campaign and emphasises the importance of the quality of the parental experience. Future work will explore parental and professional views and experiences for controversial vaccines such as MMR and HPV in a larger sample in order to examine this contextual relationship further.