Willingness Of Care On AIDS And Its Related Factors Among Registered Nurses Of General Hospitals In Hunan

Objective To investigate the situation of the willingness to providecare, knowledge and attitudes regarding AIDS among nurses from Hunangeneral hospitals, and to identify the factors influencing nurses'willingness to provide care for patients with AIDS, thus to providetheoretical basis and practical instructions for fostering nurses'willingness, improving the nursing quality and enhancing the work ofcontrolling AIDS.Methods 1350 nurses from 5 Grade-3, 15 Grade-2 and 31 Grade-1general hospitals in 3 districts of Hunan were recruited by three-stagestratified cluster sampling. The survey consisted of four sections: (1)background information; (2) a Willingness to Provide Care Scale; (3) a24-item AIDS Knowledge Scale; (4) a 21-statement AIDS Attitude Scale(AAS). Data from completed surveys were entered into SPSS. Descriptivestatistics, completely randomized design analysis of variance,Kruskal-Wallis test, Pearson correlations, and multiple linear regressionwere used to analyze the data.Results1.1350 nurses agreed to fill in the survey and 1206 effective recordswere obtained, creating a response rate of 89.3%.2.The mean score of the Willingness to Provide Care Scale was99.06±25.46. The mean score of willingness to care of each item wasdifferent, with that of measuring patients' vital signs, intravenous drip,blood transfusion and changing sheet was more than 8 while that ofgiving bed bath and cleaning dirty was less than 7.3.Attitude, knowledge, practice of wearing gloves were positivelyrelated to nurses' willingness to provide care (p＜0.05), and needlestickinjury was negatively related to it (p＜0.05).4.The mean knowledge score was 15.16±2.90, and the total correctrate was 63.2%. The mean correct rate for the knowledge of AIDS transferring routine, basic disease characters, non-transferring activities,prevention measures and the infection rate after exposing to HIV wasrespectively 87.7%,76.4%,54.6%,52.2% and 9.6%. The nurses' AIDSknowledge level was different in terms of their age, professional post,educational background (p＜0.05).5.The mean score of AAS was 0.47±0.70; and 81.3% nurses gotpositive score for AAS. 94.0% nurses felt more empathy to people gotinfected with HIV through blood transfusion than to those drug-addicted,and 74.5% held they were more worthy therapy than those drug-addicted.82.7% nurses expressed they would not show empathy for peopleinfected with HIV for the sake of having multiple sex partners. Nurses'mean score for AAS were different in terms of their age and professionalpost (p＜0.05).Conclusions1.Nurses' willingness to care for patients with AIDS was rather great(99.06±25.46), 9.0% were very willing to provide all kinds of nursingcare for those patients with AIDS, but the degree of their willingnessvaried by each nursing care activity.2.The main factors influencing nurses' willingness to provide carecomprised AIDS attitude, AIDS knowledge, needlestick injury, andpractice of wearing gloves, among which the attitude influenced thewillingness greatest.3.The nurses had knowledge-related misconceptions aboutHIV/AIDS, with the mean correct rate 63.2%. The nurses' conceptionsabout the basic characters and transferring routine of AIDS were betterthan those about the prevention, non-transferring activities andoccupational infection rate.4.81.3% nurses held positive attitudes towards AIDS, but it was notunusual for nurses to relate AIDS with ethic.