Knowledge and Attitudes of Nurses Towards Nutritional Support for HIV Positive Patients

V. Madziyauswa¹ , I.F. Banda²

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.7 , Issue.6 , pp.11-15, Jun-2021

Online published on Jun 30, 2021

Copyright © V. Madziyauswa, I.F. Banda . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
To combat HIV/AIDS spread, both antiretroviral therapy (ART) and nutritional support have play critical roles in the care of people who contracted Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Considering the limited number of qualified nutritionists, nurses are the primary health care providers complementing the role of the nutritionist to maintain optimal nutrition for healthcare users. Conversely, for people living with HIV, nutritional support service by nurses is lacking. This study aimed to describe nurse’ attitude and knowledge pertaining nutritional support of people living with HIV and AIDS at a selected public health care centres in KwaZulu-Natal. The study employed a quantitative research approach. Non-probability purposive sampling technique was employed in selecting the study setting from which 259 nursing respondents. The questionnaire was utilized to collect study data which was analysed using the SPSS version 25.There was a 100% response rate with most of the respondents being female nurses. Approximately 61.8% of the nurses demonstrated adequate nutritional knowledge, while 52.5% revealed positive attitudes. The study showed that most of the nurses had adequate knowledge and positive attitudes. This study recommends the formulation of nutritional standard protocols on nutritional support for people living with HIV (PLWHIV) and continuous dissemination among nursing professionals to enhance the translation of nurses’ nutritional knowledge into positive attitudes which ensure that people living with HIV and AIDS receive standardized, high quality and routine nutritional support, in line with the recommendations by the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN) and World Health Organization (WHO).

Key-Words / Index Term :
knowledge, attitudes, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, nurses

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