Establishment of a vaccine administration training program for medical students

Abstract

While vaccine administration training is included in the curriculum for several health professions, it is not universally incorporated into the medical school preclinical curriculum. To fill this education gap, a pilot vaccine training program for first- and second-year medical students was conducted using an online Centers for Disease Control and Prevention module and an in-person simulation with nursing faculty. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the training program. Pre- and post-surveys used a Likert 5-point scale to assess the training effectiveness. Ninety-four students completed the surveys (response rate, 93.1%). Following the training, students felt more comfortable giving a patient a vaccine under the supervision of a physician (P < 0.0001), volunteering in a community-wide vaccine campaign (P < 0.0001), and administering vaccines during clinical rotations (P < 0.0001). Most students, 93.6%, found the in-person training to be “effective” or “very effective,” and 97.8% felt that learning how to administer vaccines should be incorporated into the preclinical medical curriculum. Without this program, 76 students (80.1%) would not have been able to participate in a vaccine training. The interdisciplinary training program outlined in this study may serve as a model for similar initiatives at other medical schools.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• curriculum
• medical student
• training
• vaccine

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank the Texas Tech University System Public Health and Health Policy Think Tank and the TTUHSC School of Nursing for their contributions to this work. The authors would also like to thank the F. Marie Hall SimLife Center in Lubbock for their donation of the training space and supplies for this initiative.

Disclosure statement/Funding

The authors report no funding or conflicts of interests. This work was presented as a poster at the American Public Health Association Annual Expo in November 2022. The data supporting the findings of this study are available upon request.