Midwife attitudes: an important determinant of maternal postpartum pertussis booster vaccination

The study was designed to determine the feasibility of implementing routine dTpa vaccination in the maternity ward to new mothers and to assess midwives' attitudes toward pertussis booster vaccination, their perceived susceptibility and severity of pertussis in their patients' communities, the perceived barriers and benefits of their patients' vaccinations, and their cues to action and self-efficacy in delivering the vaccine.

A self-completed questionnaire was developed to evaluate constructs of the Health Belief Model as well as to measure midwife demographic information. Questionnaires were completed by midwives during in-services at both a public hospital and a private hospital in New South Wales, Australia.

Midwives who perceived ease in integrating booster vaccination into their workload were more likely to have high self-efficacy in delivering booster vaccination, measured through perceived importance of the role as part of their job (r = .449, p<.01), perceived confidence in delivering vaccination as part of their role (r = .608, p<.01), and perceived sufficient level of skills to deliver booster vaccination (r = .528, p<.01).

These results suggest that, of the factors measured, the most important to midwives in terms of providing pertussis booster vaccination to mothers was their own perceived self-efficacy of providing the vaccination. To increase midwives' desire and confidence to provide pertussis booster to mothers, educational materials and skills workshops could be offered.