HPV vaccination in Hong Kong: implications for medical education

To explore the experience and attitudes of physicians in clinics, and to facilitate physicians' promotion of HPV vaccination.

Primary data collected from conducting semi-structural in-depth interviews from May to June 2010 with 12 physicians in one district in Hong Kong to understand their experience of providing HPV vaccines, the difficulties in promoting HPV vaccines, and their attitudes towards HPV vaccination.

Physicians identified 4 categories of factors related to their experiences of and attitudes to providing HPV vaccination: (a) background information on HPV vaccination provided by physicians, (b) factors influencing women to receive vaccination, (c) physicians' recommendations to the public on HPV vaccines, and (d) physicians' perspectives on HPV vaccine promotion.

Our findings show that public knowledge on HPV and cervical cancer is insufficient and the role of government in vaccine promotion is unclear. Promotion strategies such as physicians' recommendation, financial assistance and health education provided by the government will influence HPV vaccination and its promotion.