The strategy, developed by the CDC in partnership with experts at the American Psychological Association, isn’t new, but it has become increasingly needed as anti-vaccine misinformation and disinformation gained further ground during the pandemic. Even now, conservative politicians and officials continue to spread misinformation and skepticism about COVID-19 vaccines, leading to a sharp partisan divide in vaccination uptake and intentions.

Still, multiple studies have demonstrated that health care providers and their staff are the most trusted sources for health care information, including vaccines, Nurse Educator JoEllen Wolicki noted in today’s presentation. This gives them one of the best chances to sway patients’ thinking—and the CDC’s strategy aims to help them do so effectively.

The baseline requirement for this to work is to have health care providers strongly endorse vaccination, which—sadly—isn’t always the case. Some, in fact, have spread ridiculous falsehoods, such as that vaccines can cause people to become magnetic. But, assuming a clinician hasn’t bought into anti-vaccine nonsense themselves, there’s an opportunity there.

Motivational interviewing

First, according to the CDC, a clinician should start from a presumptive position—strongly recommend vaccination and then presume the patient is already on board. If they’re not, that’s when the four-steps begin.

Step 1: Embrace empathy and collaboration. Clinicians should be sensitive to all cultural, family-based, and circumstantial reasons someone might be hesitant to get vaccinated. Most importantly, this step is for listening. Do not argue or debate; that does not work, Wolicki warned.

Step 2: Ask permission to share information. This is the step where the clinician tries to get the green light to try to do some persuading. If the patient says they’re not open to getting more information or having a discussion, clinicians should try to get the patient to open up about why that’s the case. If the final answer remains a firm ‘no,’ then the clinician should respect that and back off, but try to keep a foot in the door by saying something like, “Maybe we could talk about the vaccine at your next visit?”

Step 3: Motivational interviewing. If the clinician gets the go-ahead to talk more about vaccines, then they should take a motivational interviewing approach, which aims to use a patient’s goals, values, and motivations to negotiate a way to achieve them. A good way to start the conversation is with a scaled question, such as “On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to get a COVID-19 vaccine?” Then, the clinician can explore both sides of whatever the number is.