Towards Understanding Current Clinical Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitude, And Willingness To Care For HIV/AIDS Patients Among Hospitals In Zhejiang Province

Objective:This study aims for better understanding the current situation on clinical nurses’ knowledge, attitude, and willingness to care for HIV/AIDS patients among hospitals in Zhejiang province. Additionally, the study identifies the influencing factors of the clinical nurses’willingness to nurse HIV/AIDS patients, which provides a basis for later intervention. Other study purposes include reducing the clinical occupational exposure, promoting the standard prevention, improving HIV/AIDS nursing quality, and providing evidence for development of AIDS care and nursing specialists.Methods:Through stratified and cluster sampling, a questionnaire survey was conducted over 56 hospitals in 11 districts in Zhejiang province where 1972 clinical nurses from all departments participated except the Department of Infectious Diseases. Due to the different department naming practices in these hospitals, the researchers created 11 department names that reflect the functionality of each department in the survey. They include Internal Medicine Department, Surgery Department, Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Pediatrics Department, Emergency Room Department, ICU Department, Outpatient Department, Nursing Department, Operating Department, Supply Department and Other Department. Using the papery-based questionnaire survey, we conducted one-on-one meetings with the nurses. We used EpiDate3.1 software to create the database and strictly followed the principle of double entry and validation during the data input phase. We then conducted statistic analyses of the data using SPSS 19.0 software.Results:The mean score of AIDS Knowledge Items was 15.76±2.01, the percentages of nurses who answered all correct or wrong were 0.2% and 0.1% respectively. The mean score of The AIDS Attitude Scale, Generic version (AAS-G) was 0.69±0.83, among which the Empathy score and the Avoidance score were 4.19±0.60 and 3.50±0.51 respectively. The mean score of Willingness to Provide Care Scale was 84.59±29.96, clinical nurses had different willingness to care according to different nursing content. The results suggest that attitudes to HIV/AIDS, working experiences, willingness to wear gloves, number of HIV/AIDS related training in nurses and category of hospital are significantly associated with one’s willingness to care (P<0.01).Conclusion:While clinical nurses in hospitals of Zhejiang province have incomplete intermediate professional knowledge level, their attitude and willingness to care for HIV/AIDS are good, but only a small percentage of nurses have strong willingness to provide care, which is an area that needs to be further enhanced. Based on this finding, our countermeasures are:reform current HIV/AIDS training, develop the training of occupational exposure protection knowledge, and continue educating junior nurses and personnel in specialized hospitals.