Stigmatized Attitude of Healthcare Providers: A Barrier for Delivering Health Services to HIV Positive Patients - Iran

Despite the success of developed countries in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, the disease is expanding in developing countries where an unfavorable attitude exists among people, health professionals and employees. This study aimed to assess the stigmatized attitude among health care providers toward people living with HIV (PLWHA).

The study is a cross-sectional survey. The data were gathered using a structured questionnaire. The study sample included 575 health care providers of public and private hospitals in Shiraz. The data were gathered using a structured questionnaire in spring 2014. Data analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 21.

The most dominant attitude of the health care providers toward HIV/AIDS patients was related to fear (42.42%). According to the results of this study, there was a significant relationship between stigmatized attitude of the health care providers and their religious beliefs, society stigmatized attitude, and knowledge of transmission routes. The relationship between social stigmatized attitude of health care providers and their knowledge of transmission routes, with their willingness to provide services to patients is significant, as well (P<0.05). 39.6% and 46.2% of the respondents preferred not to provide services to the prostitutes and homosexual patients.

Fear of contamination and social stigmatized attitude are the main impediments to dealing with patients and providing services to them. Hence, it seems that creating an effective knowledge about transmission and correcting the socio-cultural beliefs of health providers are two key strategies to tackle this problem.

Table 2

The frequency distribution of the personnel’s responses to the preference of service delivery in separate groups of patients

Group	Prefer not to provide services	Percent	Reason of unwillingness to provide health services	Percent agreement
Drug injectors	Strongly agree	28.3	They put me at risk of disease	70.5
	Agree	24.1	They have engaged in unethical behavior	65.5
	Disagree	35.9*	I have not trained to work with this group	63.9
	Strongly disagree	11.7	I worry that people attribute me to this group	36.2
Prostitutes	Strongly agree	39.6*	They put me at risk of disease	68.5
	Agree	19.9	They have engaged in unethical behavior	83.1
	Disagree	27.4	I have not trained to work with this group	70.7
	Strongly disagree	13.1	I worry that people attribute me to this group	54.6
Homosexuals	Strongly agree	46.2*	They put me at risk of disease	67.1
	Agree	17.8	They have engaged in unethical behavior	84.2
	Disagree	24.2	I have not trained to work with this group	76.6
	Strongly disagree	11.9	I worry that people attribute me to this group	54.6

*Represents the highest percent

Table 4

The relationship between religion, knowledge, and stigmatized attitude of the society and stigmatized attitude of health service providers

Dummy variable	R	R2	Adjusted R2	T	Beta	P value
Religious beliefs	0.324	0.105	0.103	7.188	0.324	0.0001
Social stigmatized attitude	0.571	0.326	0.325	15.049	0.571	0.0001
Knowledge about transmission routes	0.118	0.014	0.012	-2.552	-0.118	0.011
General knowledge measure	0.146	0.021	0.019	3.161	0.146	0.002

Full article at: http://goo.gl/Cf8oA1

By: Zarei N1, Joulaei H2, Darabi E3, Fararouei M4.

• 1Shiraz HIV/AIDS Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
• 2Health Policy Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.
• 3Department of Sociology and Social Planning, School of Economy, Management and Social Sciences, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.
• 4Department of Epidemiology, School of public Health, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran.

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