evaluating the motivation to accept/not accept the covid-19 vaccination and its related factors in health care workers: a cross-sectional study

Background: vaccination is one of the most cost-effective ways to prevent the spread of covid-19. objectives: the present study aimed to determine the prevalence of vaccine acceptance, side effects, and factors encouraging/disincentivizing vaccination among healthcare workers. methods: a descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study was conducted on 315 health workers at imam reza hospital, kermanshah, iran, in 2021. the samples were selected through a simple random sampling method. the data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire, and the collected data were analyzed in stata-17 software. results: the vaccine acceptance rate was 84.1% (n = 265), and the vaccine refusal rate was 15.9% (n = 50). the most injected vaccines were sinopharm (n = 112, 42.3%) and sputnik (n = 88, 33.2%), respectively. the most common side effects after vaccine injection were fatigue (34.8%, n=39) and myalgia (14.3%, n = 16). being in a high-risk place (n = 199, 75.2%) and fear of contracting covid-19 (n = 88, 33.5%) were the most important reasons for encouraging vaccination. about 36.7% (n = 18) of blood clotting, 26.5% (n = 14) cardiac arrest, short-term safety, and distrust were the essential factors for not accepting the vaccine. conclusions: based on the results, the prevalence of vaccine acceptance among health workers was high. however, a small percentage did not want to accept the vaccine due to negative news and a lack of trust in the vaccine. therefore, it is necessary to establish strong educational and awareness-raising associations that transmit knowledge of the covid-19 vaccine by focusing on false information.