HIV– Related Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice among Health Care Workers in Montenegro

Abstract

The objective of this study was to assess HIV-related knowledge, attitudes and practice of health care workers (HCWs) in Montenegro.  The cross-sectional study was conducted in the University Clinical Centre of Montenegro in Podgorica.  For data collecting self-administered anonymous questionnaire was used. Out of 526 health care workers 422 were included in the survey and response rate was 80%. Insufficient level of knowledge on HIV transmission and the risk after exposure was presented generally, although the knowledge was better in physicians than in other job categories. High proportion of HCWs showed incorrect attitudes regarding HIV, like the need for testing of all hospitalized patients (64.7%), obligation of HIV+ patient to report his/her HIV status (88.9%) and the right of HCWs to refuse to treat HIV+ patient (6.2%). More than a half (55.7%) of study participants were educated in HIV/AIDS and 15.9 % of them were HIV tested. Majority of health care workers (67.5%) always applied universal preventive measures during their every day work with patients. Number of accidents in spite of applying protective devices was great. It is necessary to work continually to raise the level of knowledge of health care workers about the risk of infection in the workplace which would influence the correction of their attitudes regarding HIV and improve prevention in the workplace. Continuous research in relation to the professional risk would enable better health and safety of medical staff.