Dr Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir: Pharmacists Are Uniquely Positioned to Dispel Myths, Identify Patients Who Need Vaccines

Pharmacists can play an important role in dispelling myths about vaccines, as well as identifying patients who are eligible for vaccinations that they haven’t yet received, said Jacinda C. Abdul-Mutakabbir, PharmD, MPH, AAHIVP, assistant professor of pharmacy practice, Loma Linda University.

Transcript

How can pharmacists dispel myths and combat misinformation around vaccines?

I think that pharmacists can do a lot, honestly, to dispel myths. One thing that I, myself, as a pharmacist really work hard to do is to, one, to make a definite kind of statement or stance on how I feel about the vaccine. When individuals ask me how I feel, or “what vaccine should I receive?” we say the vaccine that's in your arm.

Also, I think that pharmacists are really just positioned uniquely to where, one, we know that we need to translate information in a way that everyone can understand. But then, two, we are able to really take in the scientific information and really make sense of it and then relay that to the public. I think that's become very important during this time of vaccines, and then when we think about just mRNA vaccines. It's not even just significant only to COVID-19, because mRNA vaccines are going to be utilized as technology for other diseases, as well.

I think that we really just have a placement there. But then the importance with dispelling the myths is just remembering that we are scientists, and that we really need to translate this information to provide it to patients. I think that's the biggest way to dispel myths is to relay facts.

How do pharmacists play a unique role in identifying patients to target for vaccinations?

Pharmacists play a unique role in that, one, we have access to—depending on the specialized space that the pharmacist works in—different records that will show us that the patient may be in need of immunizations, or we have access to records to where we can see that the patient may have a chronic disease that warrants these vaccines to ensure that they are able to remain healthy. So that's one place that pharmacists can find patients to target for vaccine uptake.

An additional place is really just talking to the patient—asking them questions, asking them if they've received any of the vaccines. There are different vaccines that are decided upon age. For the shingles vaccine anyway, we know that at age 50 patients are in that place where they need to go ahead and receive the shingles vaccine. Then it's very easy to ask them, “Hey, have you heard about the shingles vaccine? Is that something that you're considering doing today upon your visit?” And if the patient says “no,” well, now you have that opportunity to engage them with factual information to promote the importance of the shingles vaccine, and then hopefully that will be enough for them to go ahead and receive it. I think pharmacists are very uniquely placed there.