Postpartum prevention of pertussis in a French maternity hospital: impact on general practitioners

A protocol which combined giving parents' information and issuing them with a pertussis vaccine prescription was introduced in 2008 in the maternity ward of the Angers University Hospital, France. As a result, a vaccine coverage rate of 69% among mothers and 63% among fathers was achieved. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of this protocol on general practitioners in the county for which Angers is the main specialist maternity unit, in terms of their opinions on it and any changes they made to their practices. An anonymous, descriptive survey was carried out in 2009, via a questionnaire sent out to the 655 general practitioners (GPs). The response rate among the GPs was 77% (508/655). Of the respondents, 97.8% (497/508) were familiar with the vaccination recommendations and of these, 30.4% (150/495; missing data n=2) knew of them through the information letter given out by the maternity unit and 97.6% (482/494; missing data n=3) stated that they had informed their patients of them. Of the GPs who replied, 97.5% (476/488; missing data n=9) approved of the strategy, while 60.4% of them (285/472; missing data n=4) said they had changed their information practices since 2008 and 67.2% (307/457; missing data n=19) said they had changed their vaccination practices over the same period. Most of the GPs (53% (241/454); missing data n=43) approved of the maternity unit giving parents the vaccine. The pertussis prevention protocol introduced by the maternity unit was clearly understood by the general practitioners and led them to significantly change their information and vaccination practices.