Purpose: In our hospital system, the HPV vaccine is being distributed in a limited fashion. Our purpose was to evaluate the acceptance of the HPV vaccine in our county hospital system in order increase its utilization for our patients.
Methods: The survey was developed with the help of our School of Public Health. Patients and clinic personnel were asked to complete the survey over a six week period. The survey encompassed demographics, Pap Smear/HPV knowledge, and HPV vaccine knowledge.
Results: 30 employees and 200 patients were surveyed (53.8% Spanish speaking). Patients older than 40 years were most likely to allow their child to receive the HPV vaccine and under the age of 21 were most likely to be undecided. Hispanic patients were most likely to be undecided about the vaccine encouraging sexual activity. Only 48.3% of employees strongly disagreed that the vaccine would encourage sexual activity. 34.5% of employees would not allow their child to receive the HPV vaccine. 73.9% of patients responded that no medical professional had discussed HPV or the HPV vaccine.
Conclusions: It is evident through our survey that patients and clinic personnel require more effective education about cervical dysplasia and the HPV vaccine. Levels of education, language and age have all proven to be variables in need of consideration. Our survey has given us insight that will allow us to better educate the population we are trying to help. We plan to repeat our survey next year to monitor the success of our educational programs.