Attitude of nurses in a burn unit to hiv/aids burn patients.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have constituted a major challenge and concern worldwide. This is especially true among health workers who have to take care of such patients. This paper is aimed at studying the attitude to HIV/AID burn patients of nurses working in a burn unit. The work was carried out at the burns unit of the National Orthopaedics Hospital in Enugu, Nigeria. In a cross-sectional descriptive study, 125 questionnaires were distributed among nurses working in the burn unit. All the 120 nurses who responded were aware of HIV/AIDS: 80.8% of them believed that the prevalence was high, 93.3% that they could be infected while taking care of the patients, 91.5% that all burn patients should be screened for HIV, and 41.4% that their knowledge of the patients' HIV status would affect their professional duty to them; 31.1% would not want to dress the wounds of known HIV/AIDS burn patients. We conclude that there is a need to educate nurses and indeed all health care workers on adherence to universal precaution rather than routine screening for HIV of all burn patients as knowledge of the patients' HIV status may lead to discrimination against them.