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Herd thinking

Gervase Vernon
British Journal of General Practice 2020; 70 (701): 582-583. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X713657
Gervase Vernon
John Tasker House Surgery, Dunmow, Essex. Email:
Roles: Retired GP
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Thank you for your remarks on COVID vaccination in your October editorial ‘Herd thinking’.1 You are absolutely right that the positivist philosophical approach that some doctors might use to persuade patients of the benefits of vaccination is often not shared by the patients.

However, all is not lost. As I described in an article in your journal,2 the way forward is to identify the patient’s explanatory perspective and, having identified it, to respond within that perspective. This is a technique that every successful salesman has learnt and which I make no claim to have invented. In the case of immunisation, many of the papers quoted in that article come from the World Health Organization ‘Sociology and Immunisation Project’, which has sponsored relevant research all over the world.

Much has been written and well written about immunisation since,3 but I do not think that this basic point has been superseded.

  • © British Journal of General Practice 2020

REFERENCES

  1. 1.↵
    1. Lawson E
    (2020) Herd thinking. Br J Gen Pract, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp20X712661.
  2. 2.↵
    1. Vernon JG
    (2003) Immunisation policy: from compliance to concordance? Br J Gen Pract 53, 490, 399–404.
    OpenUrlAbstract/FREE Full Text
  3. 3.↵
    1. Larson HJ
    (2020) Stuck: how vaccine rumours start — and why they don’t go away (OUP US, New York, NY).
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British Journal of General Practice: 70 (701)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 70, Issue 701
December 2020
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Herd thinking
Gervase Vernon
British Journal of General Practice 2020; 70 (701): 582-583. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp20X713657

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Herd thinking
Gervase Vernon
British Journal of General Practice 2020; 70 (701): 582-583. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp20X713657
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