Assessing Pharmacists' Attitudes regarding Delivery of the Pandemic Influenza Vaccine in British Columbia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: In response to the clear indication that the second wave of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 would arrive in North America during fall 2009, the Ministry of Health Services in British Columbia proposed expanding pharmacists' scope of practice to include administering vaccinations. This change in regulations was prompted by the anticipated need to provide millions of doses of the pandemic (H1N1) influenza vaccine in a short period of time. Objectives: To determine pharmacists' willingness and preparedness to deliver vaccines, especially the pandemic (H1N1) influenza vaccine, as well as their preferences related to providing this service. Methods: A survey was developed to elicit pharmacists' opinions concerning administration of vaccines. Staff pharmacists and pharmacy managers and owners licensed to practice in British Columbia were invited to complete the online survey. The survey results were analyzed descriptively. Results: In total, 151 pharmacists participated in the study. The majority of respondents were men (84 [55.6%]) and most had practised for at least 5 years (108 [71.5%]). Most respondents (123 [81.5%]) were interested in administering vaccines to their clients, including the pandemic (H1N1) influenza vaccine (113 [74.8%]). In general, respondents preferred to vaccinate adults rather than children and understood the importance of documentation, reporting of adverse events and reporting to their local health authorities. More than half of participants (84 [55.6%]) felt that they were prepared to provide vaccine services in time for the pandemic (H1N1) vaccination program in fall 2009. The majority of these were prepared to offer vaccination services during daytime hours (91 [74.0%]), and some were willing to do so during the evenings (43 [35.0%]) and on weekends (40 [32.5%]). Ninety (73.2%) of the participants thought they had adequate space to administer vaccinations and maintain patient confidentiality and 111 (90.2%) indicated that they had adequate space to store the vaccines in their refrigerators, but only 82 (66.7%) had adequate storage space in their freezers. Conclusion: Pharmacists in British Columbia were willing to offer vaccination services to their clients. Given this willingness and a general level of preparedness, pharmacists who have undergone appropriate training should be allowed to vaccinate against seasonal and pandemic influenza and to offer pneumococcal vaccine in their pharmacies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".