Exploring HIV stigma among future healthcare providers in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Future healthcare professionals are an important group for interventions to eliminate HIV stigma in the health workforce. Researchers examined HIV stigma and its relationship with healthcare discipline, HIV knowledge, and religiosity among nursing, medical, and midwifery students (N = 505) in three regions of Indonesia. In a multivariable linear model, higher HIV stigma was associated with male sex, lower levels of income and HIV knowledge, and higher levels of religiosity. An interaction of healthcare discipline and province was also significant. Medical students in Jakarta had higher predicted stigma scores compared to nursing students in Jakarta and compared to medical students in other provinces. Nursing students in Papua had lower predicted stigma scores compared to medical and midwifery students in Papua and compared to nursing students elsewhere. Strategies to reduce HIV stigma in the Indonesian health workforce should include a strong focus on pre-clinical educational settings and consider public nursing institutions as providing possible best practice models.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV stigma
• Indonesia
• healthcare education
• healthcare providers
• men who have sex with men

Acknowledgements

We thank the participating schools and individual study participants for sharing of their time and gratefully acknowledge research support from Universitas Indonesia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education, Republic of Indonesia [HIBAH Riset UI Number: PUPT. No. 0463/UN2.R12/HKP.05.00/2015].