Abstract

Introduction: Vaccination is one of the preventive measures that should be taken against COVID-19. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the COVID-19 vaccination status and factors affecting vaccination of healthcare workers (HCWs) working in our hospital.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted by filling out a questionnaire form with face-to-face or snowball methods to HCWs in our hospital. The questionnaire is composed of 10 questions, including demographic information, occupation of the person, working in the pandemic unit, COVID-19 and Influenza vaccination information, contracting COVID-19, and hospitalization status. Full-dose vaccination was defined as four doses in total. P<0.05 was accepted as a statistical significance level.

Results: We included 744 HCWs in this study. The median age was 32 (17-60) years, and 60.8% (n=452) were women, mostly nurses (32.3%, n=240). The vaccination rate after contracting COVID-19 was 56.9% (n=269). Vaccination rates against COVID-19 were higher in women (94.5%) than in men (93%), in those who were vaccinated against influenza (99.4%) than those who were not (91%), and in doctors (99.3%) than in nurses (92.5%) and other HCWs (%90.8) (p=0.051, p=0.00, p=0.004). The rate of full-dose vaccination was found to be statistically significantly higher in those who worked in the pandemic unit (39.4%) than in those who did not (27.9%), in those who had influenza vaccination (44.5%) than those who did not (32.2%), and also higher in doctors (61.8%) compared to nurses (31.7%) and other HCWs (27.2%) (p=0.002, p=0.04, p=0.000). The rate of having COVID-19 disease was higher in HCWs who were unvaccinated or vaccinated with a missing dose (63.2%) compared to HCWs who were vaccinated with a full dose (41%) (p=0.000).

Conclusion: Full-dose vaccination reduces the rate of COVID-19 disease, and doctors are more inclined to have full-dose vaccination than nurses and other HCWs.