Abstract:
HIV/AIDS is one of the major health outbreaks
which causes mortality in global level more than 1.1
million deaths annually. HIV infected people were highly
discriminated and neglected by nurses during their clinical
practice due to the misconceptions and misbeliefs regarding
HIV/AIDS. In future, nursing students have to work in
hospitals and they have responsibility to provide quality
care to the HIV infected patients. Therefore, there is a
need to enhance the level of knowledge and attitude of the
students regarding HIV/AIDS which is very important
to eradicate discrimination and negligence of HIV/AIDS
infected patients. A cross sectional study was carried out
among all students at College of Nursing, Jaffna to assess
the knowledge and attitude towards HIV/AIDS. The
data were collected using an adapted self-administered
questionnaire which consists of 25 questions to assess
knowledge, and 15 questions to assess attitude. The
data were analyzed using SPSS 21 statistical software.
92 students participated in this study. The results of the
study revealed that 60.9% of students had good level of
knowledge and 39.1% of students had adequate level
of knowledge with the mean of 36.98 (SD+6.37). The
positive and negative attitudes towards HIV/AIDS among
participants were 96.7%, 3.3% respectively. This study
concluded that students of College of Nursing had good
knowledge and positive attitude on HIV/AIDS. Most of
the students had good knowledge on HIV/AIDS, its mode
of transmission, and prevention.
