Acceptance of the nonavalent HPV vaccine among medical students: A knowledge, attitudes and practices study

Abstract

Various strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) cause myriad cancers, and previous vaccines protected against the most common oncogenic ones. To increase the protective spectrum, the novel nonavalent vaccine has been introduced. Medical students are future physicians and potential key proponents of this vaccine; hence, awareness among them regarding this vaccine should boost its future adoption. We assess the knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) among medical students at a single college regarding the nonavalent HPV vaccine and specific reasons against its adoption. All willing medical students were administered a semi-objective questionnaire in English twice; once before a 20-minute visual training presentation on HPV vaccination and once after. The questionnaire contained 9 objective dichotomous questions and 5 questions pertaining to KAP. Training was imparted to batches of 15-20 students at a time. There were 320 participants with a mean (SD) age of 20.39 (1.648) years, with 200 (62.5)% of them being females. Mean (SD) objective scores pre and post training were 4.47 (1.5) and 6.78 (1.308), respectively, showing significant improvement post training (p = 0.001). Second-year students improved significantly more compared to other years (p = 0.01). Knowledge regarding the vaccine significantly improved post-training according to the subjective dichotomous questions(p = 0.001); with 281 (87.8%) participants recommending the vaccine post-training compared to 215 (67.2%) pre-training (p = 0.001). Potential side effects of the nonavalent vaccine were the most common reason for not recommending the vaccine, which was almost completely addressed post-training, whereas the higher cost of the vaccine became the most prevalent reason. In conclusion, focused training improves the KAP of medical students and should enhance future widespread adoption of the nonavalent HPV vaccine.