Health authorities in France are concerned about low rates of influenza vaccination among nurses, which has implications for protection of vulnerable patients and absenteeism and presenteeism of healthcare professionals. We run a survey structured around the classification of norm-related beliefs of Bicchieri (2017) on professional nurses to identify correlates of vaccination decisions and identify potential ideas for future interventions to increase vaccination rates.
Our results point toward interventions that give factual information about the protective value for patients, and strengthening the belief that other nurses are getting vaccinated, as being potentially effective in increasing vaccination rates among nurses. Factual information about side-effects and normative information about doctors are unrelated to nurses’ decisions to vaccinate in our sample, while highlighting the belief among the general population that nurses should get vaccinated may backfire.