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Best practice and Fifteen-minute consultations
Fifteen-minute consultation: Vaccine-hesitant parents
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  • Published on: 7 August 2020
    Vaccine-hesitant parents
    • Tom D Allport, Paediatrician Community Children's Health Partnership, Sirona CIC, and University of Bristol

    I appreciate as ever the careful encouragement of Helen Bedford and David Elliman about ways to engage with parents hesitant about having their children vaccinated. Implicit throughout the article, but I think worth making explicit, is the importance of building trust between professional and parent(s) around this issue. With this in mind, it is clearer why telling stories, and discussing feelings (for example parents' fears of hurting or harming their children, and professionals' frustration at apparent conflicts of interests that advocates of anti-MMR or anti-vaccine stances may have), can work so well. Those engaging in these conversations may do well to make relationship, feelings and trust the centre points of respectful dialogue with parents who are feeling hesitant about vaccines.

    Conflict of Interest:
    None declared.