I’m currently on my pediatrics rotation and on my first day in clinic, I had about 40% of families decline vaccinations. For the last visit of the day, the patient was a 3 week old coming in for her newborn followup and her parents said that they were against all vaccinations.

I asked them to tell me what their concerns were and spent an hour debunking conspiracy theories and answering all the questions they had. By the end of the discussion, they agreed to look at the CDC fact sheets for the recommended childhood vaccinations for the first year of life and said they would look at doing a delayed vaccination schedule at least. They wanted specific numbers and data about complication rates, but I didn’t have that on hand. They seemed okay with my explanation that the data is everyone walking around that got all their childhood vaccinations and are doing fine.

Now, as a medical student, my time is basically worthless and I can absolutely sit there for an hour and answer questions, but I won’t be able to do that in practice. I’d love any suggestions on how to compress that discussion (or confirmation that I’d just have to schedule those appointments at the end of the day and spend the hour.)