Vaccine Safety KNOW-HOW among HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONALS

The objectives of this international project were as follows:

1. To assess the degree of involvement in vaccine safety counseling among doctors in Germany and Russia 
2. To assess awareness of available vaccine safety standards among members of paediatric professional organizations.
3. To assess perceptions of the applicability of standardized case definitions in the context of Adverse Events After Immunization reporting.
   
   

This project in collaboration with paediatric professional associations in Germany and Russia was designed to assess perceptions of vaccine safety among paediatricians, and to generate feedback to educators and policy makers. We learned that an average pediatrician in either country spends about one hour per workday on vaccine safety consultations. However, only a minority of practicing pediatricians had ever received formal training in vaccine safety during their training. Most doctors were willing to report AEFI if they encountered them in clinical practice, but only few of them knew where they would need to send their reports. 

The results of the project were published in Paediatric Drug Safety.