Objective: To find the reasons which determine failures to comply with anti-flu vaccinations, so that these can be corrected and the coverage of this preventive action be increased.
Design: Observational crossover study, done by means of a telephone survey of people over 65. A questionnaire with closed questions, composed after a pilot study and validated by Cronbach's alpha.
Setting: Primary Care Centre (PCC).
Patients: We calculated a population sample for qualitative variables (_ = 0.05; p = 0.60; e = 0.05) of 294 people over 65, chosen from the PCC records, by means of random sampling (K = 4) stratified for age and discounting the telephone selection bias.
Measurements and results: The proportion of vaccinated patients (60.9%) obtained in our study did not significantly differ from that in the general population. The percentage of patients included in the programme for the first time was 14%. Level of satisfaction among those vaccinated was 89.4%, with 8.9% of problems detected being light. Main causes of non-vaccination were: thinking that they didn't need it (63.5%), ignorance of the campaign (35.7%), fear of the reaction (24.3%), forgetting (10.4%). The main form of access to the campaign information was from the PCC, both through individuals and posters. Lack of information was statistically significant (p < 0.00001) as a determinant of non-vaccination, without other factors (age, sex, associated pathologies...) explaining these differences.
Conclusions: Individualised and on-going health education by the PCC is fundamental. This would enable the identification of the group not vaccinated due to their express refusal and the recovery of non-vaccinated patients.