Nurses' perceptions towards patients with a homosexual lifestyle

Abstract

A number of studies have been carried out in health care to investigate issues related to homosexuality and nursing. Many of these studies concluded that nurses are generally positive in their attitudes towards homosexual patients however, there are various gaps in their knowledge regarding the topic. The present study was conducted to obtain a general view of nurses' perceptions towards patients with a homosexual lifestyle. The objectives focused on; exploring nurses' perceptions about caring for homosexual patients, to determine whether nurses believe of any specific needs of homosexual patients and to investigate nurses' perceptions about their knowledge regarding homosexuality and the homosexual lifestyle. A descriptive, non-experimental design was used for this study and was achieved by means of a questionnaire which was randomly distributed to male and female nurses working on general medical wards in a local state run general acute hospital. From a response rate of 74% and following manual, content and statistical analysis with the use of SPSS, the results obtained showed that although most nurses know people who are homosexual they are still relatively uninformed about homosexuality and the homosexual lifestyle especially regarding lesbian women. Additionally nurses are not aware of the specific needs that homosexual patients might have, and thus they are consequently unsure of how to give holistic care to homosexual patients. Therefore, the need arises for providing courses to staff nurses on dealing with homosexual patients, evaluating nursing courses to highlight the importance of sexuality as part of nursing care and encouraging nurses to offer support to patients who are open about their homosexuality.

The study presented with various limitations and thus the results obtained cannot be generalized. The major limitation of this study was the relatively small sample size administered, had a la1ge1 sample been taken, mote 'o-rclations wuld have been made and the results would have given a better insight of the actual situation on the local medical wards. Several recommendations based on the findings of this study were drawn up, one of them being to conduct a similar study including all other health care professionals working on general medical wards to investigate whether there are any differences in the perceptions towards homosexual patients between different disciplines.