American attitudes toward scientific expertise have become increasingly contentious in recent years. But many people across the political spectrum still place high levels of trust in their personal physicians. Correspondingly, both popular media and public health officials have encouraged physicians to serve as strong advocates for COVID-19 vaccination.
At the same time, however, there have been several cases of doctors expressing skepticism about vaccines in the media. Though the American Medical Association found that 96% of physicians reported being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in June 2021, some high-profile physicians have spread misinformation about vaccine safety. Some patients have also reported that their personal physicians discouraged them from getting vaccinated.
One conservative group of doctors called the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, which counts Republican Senator and ophthalmologist Rand Paul among its members, offers several examples of how some physicians actively promote vaccine skepticism.
The group has taken legal action to encourage parental noncompliance with childhood vaccine mandates, using misinterpreted data to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines are uniquely dangerous compared to other vaccines.
These examples raise an important question: Just how prevalent is physician vaccine hesitancy, and why might some physicians hold negative views toward vaccines?
Our recent study found that the same factors thought to encourage hesitancy in the general public – such as having right-leaning political views – might also motivate physician opposition to vaccination.
In May 2021, we asked 625 primary care physicians nationwide about their attitudes toward vaccines and whether they believed vaccines are safe, effective and important.
We also surveyed potential factors that could influence physician attitudes toward vaccines. These included political ideology, previous infection with COVID-19, religiosity and other demographics.
On the surface, our results provide some reassuring news for using physicians as leading vaccine promoters. We found that only 5.2% of these doctors were unvaccinated against COVID-19 at the time of our survey. In addition, our results suggest that these physicians’ views toward vaccines are overwhelmingly positive – 88% of them agreed or strongly agreed that vaccines in general are safe. Likewise, 90% of physicians agreed that vaccines are effective, and 89% agreed that vaccines are important. When we compared these responses to responses from the general public, we found that the doctors are 19% more likely to strongly agree that vaccines are safe and 16% more likely to strongly agree they’re effective.
Digging deeper into the data, however, reveals some troubling trends. Even if most physicians are well-positioned to serve as vaccination advocates, our results suggest that 10.1% of them do not agree that vaccines in general are safe. Similarly, 9.3% do not agree that all vaccines are effective, and 8.3% do not agree that they are important.
The physicians’ political leanings and previous health experiences may help explain their views. We found that politically conservative ones and those who previously contracted COVID-19 were 19% less likely to believe that vaccines are safe and effective.
Our research finds that physician vaccine hesitancy is more prevalent than vaccination campaigns may have assumed. Vaccine hesitancy among physicians is also likely motivated by the same factors that encourage hesitancy in the general public. This potentially poses a problem for vaccination efforts that rely on physicians to promote vaccine uptake.
Nevertheless, there may be ways to improve vaccine confidence in this group.
Partisanship, for example, plays an important role in shaping vaccine hesitancy. Consequently, tactics shown to improve vaccine attitudes in the general public – such as highlighting GOP politicians with more positive views toward vaccination – could potentially increase support for vaccination among physicians as well. In our view, studying ways to encourage vaccine enthusiasm among doctors could help “move the needle” on vaccine uptake.
Matt Motta is an assistant professor of political science at Oklahoma State University. Distributed by The Associated Press.
