Attitudes among nurse educators toward homosexuality

Homosexual populations have unique and specific cultures, psychosocial characteristics, health issues, and health care disparities that are currently ignored or insufficiently addressed in nursing education. To understand the reasons for these omissions, this descriptive study explores the attitudes of nurse educators (N = 1,282) toward homosexuality and the extent to which demographic, educational, and occupational factors are related to their attitudes. Responding to a direct online survey solicitation, self-selected participants completed the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale (ATLG) and a supplementary data questionnaire. Results indicate that the majority of participants have positive attitudes toward homosexuality, which is consistent with prior findings. Most participants believe it is important to teach nursing students about homosexuality, but they consider themselves unprepared to teach this content. Effects of various demographic and occupational factors on participants' ATLG scores and implications of the findings for nursing education and nursing health care policy are discussed.