Predictors of health care workers’ support for discriminatory treatment and care of people who inject drugs

Loren Brener; Elena Cama; Timothy Broady; Max Hopwood; John de Wit; Carla Treloar

doi:10.1080/13548506.2018.1546018

Predictors of health care workers’ support for discriminatory treatment and care of people who inject drugs

Loren Brener^*, Elena Cama, Timothy Broady, Max Hopwood, John de Wit, Carla Treloar

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Complex lifestyle issues associated with injecting drug use may make it difficult to provide care to people who inject drugs (PWID). Negative attitudes towards PWID can undermine the provision of good quality care, hence, it is important to explore the impact of health workers’ attitudes in the delivery of care to PWID. An online survey was administered to 336 health workers assessing contact with and attitudes towards PWID, concerns about these clients as well as whether health workers feel stigmatised by working with PWID. Health workers were also asked whether they supported the discriminatory behaviour of a colleague in a series of hypothetical scenarios about working with PWID. In correlational analyses, negative attitudes towards PWID, greater concerns about the behaviour of PWID, not feeling stigmatised by colleagues and seeing fewer clients who inject were associated with greater support for discriminatory actions in the hypothetical scenarios. Multiple regression analysis results showed that only attitudes towards PWID and concerns about the behaviour of injecting clients remain independent predictors of participant support for the hypothetical scenarios. This research highlights the role of attitudes toward PWID in understanding health workers’ decisions, practices and potential behaviour.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	439-445
Number of pages	7
Journal	Psychology, Health and Medicine
Volume	24
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2018.1546018
Publication status	Published - 21 Apr 2019
Externally published	Yes

Funding

This study was funded by the Australian Government Department of Health as part of the Stigma Indicators Monitoring Project. The authors wish to thank the advisory committee, who have provided feedback on the measures utilised in this study. We would like to acknowledge the Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) for their assistance with this research. The authors also wish to thank the health care workers who gave up their time to participate in the survey. This work was supported by the Australian Government Department of Health [n/a].

Keywords

Attitudes
discrimination
health care workers
injecting drug use
stigma

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1080/13548506.2018.1546018

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title = "Predictors of health care workers{\textquoteright} support for discriminatory treatment and care of people who inject drugs",

abstract = "Complex lifestyle issues associated with injecting drug use may make it difficult to provide care to people who inject drugs (PWID). Negative attitudes towards PWID can undermine the provision of good quality care, hence, it is important to explore the impact of health workers{\textquoteright} attitudes in the delivery of care to PWID. An online survey was administered to 336 health workers assessing contact with and attitudes towards PWID, concerns about these clients as well as whether health workers feel stigmatised by working with PWID. Health workers were also asked whether they supported the discriminatory behaviour of a colleague in a series of hypothetical scenarios about working with PWID. In correlational analyses, negative attitudes towards PWID, greater concerns about the behaviour of PWID, not feeling stigmatised by colleagues and seeing fewer clients who inject were associated with greater support for discriminatory actions in the hypothetical scenarios. Multiple regression analysis results showed that only attitudes towards PWID and concerns about the behaviour of injecting clients remain independent predictors of participant support for the hypothetical scenarios. This research highlights the role of attitudes toward PWID in understanding health workers{\textquoteright} decisions, practices and potential behaviour.",

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AU - Broady, Timothy

AU - Hopwood, Max

AU - de Wit, John

AU - Treloar, Carla

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Predictors of health care workers’ support for discriminatory treatment and care of people who inject drugs

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

UN SDGs

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