Willingness of nursing students and faculty to care for patients with AIDS

Previous research has indicated that nursing students, along with other health care professionals, have expressed an unwillingness to care for patients with AIDS. The purposes of this study were to examine the relationships among nursing students' and faculty members' knowledge of AIDS, attitudes toward patients with AIDS, and willingness to care for them. A descriptive-correlational design was used in which nursing students and faculty (n = 166) at an urban, middle-sized Canadian university completed the AIDS Assess Test developed by Lawrence and Lawrence. Significant relationships were found between willingness to care for and have contact with persons with AIDS and knowledge scores for the group as a whole. Nursing students with more knowledge about AIDS expressed greater willingness to care for AIDS patients. Subjects in the senior year of the nursing program had significantly higher scores on willingness to care for or have contact with persons with AIDS than subjects in other levels of the program and faculty (F(4, 143) = 2.94, p = 0.02). Subjects who knew a homosexual person had significantly higher scores on willingness to care for and have contact with persons with AIDS.