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Attitudes of Health Professionals toward Caring for People with Hepatitis C

With an estimated 170 million people worldwide infected with hepatitis C, those with chronic disease are expected to experience significant morbidity and mortality. As a result, many health professionals likely will care for these patients at some point in their medical careers. Despite this situation, there are scant data on the attitudes of health professionals toward caring for individuals living with hepatitis C. To help fill this gap, researchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia conducted a cross-sectional survey to explore the inter-relationship among health prpfessionals' hepatitis C knowledge and attitudes towards treating people with hepatitis C and their self-reported clinical behavior.

Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to 3675 complementary therapists, dentists, medical practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, undergraduate medical and nursing students, and people with hepatitis C in Victoria, Australia. Of 3675 health professsionals contacted, 46% responded (n = 1510). Data is presented only for health professsionals (medical practitioners, nurses, complementary therapists, dentists, and pharmacists (n = 1347).

Results

Most health professionals demonstrated adequate hepatitis C knowledge, but some displayed intolerant attitudes toward people with hepatitis C.

Health professsionals' self-reported compliance with infection control practices indicated that they frequently treated people with hepatitis C differently from other patients by using additional infection control precautions.

Fear of contagion and disapproval of injecting drug use emerged as barriers to health professsionals' willingness to treat people with hepatitis C.

Conclusion

Based on their findings, the researchers concluded, "The results suggest that focusing education strategies on changing health professsionals' attitudes toward people with hepatitis C, injecting drug users, and infection control guidelines rather than concentrating solely on medical information might ultimately improve patient care."

Gastroenterology Department, St Vincent's Health, Melbourne, Australia; and Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes, St Vincent's Health, Melbourne and the School of Nursing, the University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

10/05/07

Reference

JA Richmond, TL Dunning, PV Desmond. Health Professionals' Attitudes toward Caring for People with Hepatitis C. Journal of Viral Hepatitis 14(9): 624-632. September 2007.