HEALTH CARE WORKERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF HEPATITIS C AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS PATIENTS WITH HEPATITIS C: A PILOT STUDY | Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing Home Archives Vol. 20 No. 1 (2002): September - November 2002 Research Papers Main Article Content

Thea F. van de Mortel, RN, BSc(Hons), MHlthSc, ICCert, FCN(NSW), MRCNA

Keywords

hepatitis C, health care workers, knowledge, attitudes, practices, discrimination

Abstract

A questionnaire was developed to determine health care workers’ (HCWs) knowledge of, and attitudes towards, hepatitis C in order to inform an education strategy to prevent discrimination towards hepatitis Cpositive patients. The study’s aim was to determine the questionnaire’s reliability and validity. Fifty-eight of 100 questionnaires distributed to HCWs were returned. The internal consistency of the scale was 0.7 following the removal of one item. The face validity of the instrument was high. It was found that a number of demographic variables impacted on HCWs’ level of knowledge regarding hepatitis C and their willingness to care for patients with hepatitis C. Further research with a larger sample size is needed to clarify these issues.

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