Quality Improvement Projects in Increasing Adult Vaccination Coverage Rates
ABSTRACT
Vaccination is a highly effective and versatile preventive health service in the fight against infectious diseases. There are many factors that demonstrate the importance of lifelong vaccination: ageing society, immune ageing, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, frequently mutating pathogens and infectious diseases whose spread is accelerated due to globalization, as in the pandemic example we are in. With strong primary healthcare services in our country, childhood vaccination coverage rates are at the level of 96-98%. Although there is no clear data to represent the whole country, adult vaccination rates are very low. There are many reasons for the low adult vaccination coverage rates, pertaining to the individual, healthcare professionals and health authorities. Strategies to increase immunization rates should be designed in accordance with the conditions of the country considering these factors. Quality improvement practices may offer a new strategy for increasing adult vaccination coverage rates. In this context; analyzing the current process, adopting strategies to improve service delivery, continuous monitoring and adaptation process cycle can be used. The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention encourages healthcare providers to use quality improvement processes to increase vaccination coverage rates. Integrating a new procedure to the process can be done with a variety of techniques: selfassessment, training, process mapping, audit feedback. In this review, it is aimed to give examples of the use of quality improvement processes in increasing adult vaccination coverage rates. The review pertains to studies conducted in outpatient and inpatient healthcare areas to increase the vaccination rates of risk groups and healthy individuals. In conclusion, quality improvement projects can be successfully used to develop customized and sustainable strategies in different target populations and different healthcare settings to increase vaccination coverage rates.
AUTHOR(s)
Rana Baykan
Mine Durusu Tanrıöver
