Knowledge of Libyan Nurses and Nursing Students about HIV Transmission and Prevention (Tripoli-2012)

Abstract

In the writings on AIDS, much attention has been paid to the health care workers’ knowledge of and attitudes toward
AIDS. Little is known about the knowledge and attitudes of health care workers of developing countries. The
purpose of this study is to assess the knowledge of the nurses about HIV disease and to define the characteristics
of registered or student Libyan nurses associated with low HIV knowledge level.
Cross-sectional design used to conduct an anonymous a self-administered questionnaire developed after reviewing
previous published studies for collection the data. A convenience sample of 151 nurses from the two main
university hospitals in Tripoli and 74 nursing students participate in the study (total 225), after a verbal consent
they asked to complete the questionnaire, SPSS software version 16 and STATA version 12 used to analyze the
collected data.
Overall nurses had low knowledge level about HIV and AIDS, 80% of them believe that handling belongs of an
HIV infected person may transmit the disease, 84% thought that blood and semen are the only body fluids can
transmit HIV, 40% believed that mosquito and bedbugs bite may transmit the virus, 82.7% assumed that the
quantity of the exposed blood has no role in HIV transmission, 70.2% do not believe that HIV virus can be killed
simply by household bleach, 60.9% expect the necessity of wearing gloves when in contact with HIV person sweat
and saliva, wrong guess about stopping the bleeding after needle stick may reduce the risks of getting HIV was
present in 59.6%, usage of drugs as post exposure prophylaxis is not known in 52.9%.
The study determined a low knowledge score and identified many misconceptions.
Expansion of nursing curricula to ensure that specific up to date information on HIV and AIDS is provided
to nursing students and involvements of registered nurses in regular training courses about all aspects of HIV
infection are needed