Social care institutions workers of the far eastern federal district awareness on HIV-infection and its significance in providing quality services and lowering self-perceived HIV risk

Objective of the research: to reveal level of awareness and stigmatizing factors that influence service provision, to disclose self-perceived HIV risk of social care workers and a necessity of planning events targeted at increasing their competence concerning the issues of HIV-infection. Materials and methods: by the means of a structured questionnaire, a sociological research was conducted among 386 specialists of social care institutions of 6 constituent entities of the Far Eastern Federal district. Mean age of survey participants was 41.5 years, work experience – 11.2 years. Sociological (survey) and analytical research methods were utilized in the study. Results: HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of main medical and social issues of modern days. Specialists of social care institutions will inevitably meet with people living with HIV during their practice. Their insufficient awareness about HIV transmission route, stigmatization of people living with HIV cause fear and reluctance to work with such recipients of the service. Respondents rated their knowledge on the issue of HIV-infection as satisfactory in 74.7%. All participants were well aware of main routs of HIV transmission however, mother-to-child transmission was known only by 66.1% of respondents. A certain lack of knowl­edge was revealed regarding self-perceived HIV risk as well as anxiety regarding working with HIV-infected clients and high rate of alert when working with HIV-positive colleagues. However, up to 25.7% of respondents expressed their readiness to help people living with HIV. Using condoms, disposable medical instruments and personal hygiene items as well as avoiding intravenous drug use were selected by survey participants as measures of HIV-infection prevention. Conclusion: the results of the research indicate insufficient level of awareness on the issue, because of which a con­clusion can be made that there is a certain degree of stigmatization of clients living with HIV receiving social services, as well as existence of self-perceived occupational vulnerability to HIV among social workers. This reveals a necessity of further surveillance over social workers’ knowledge to define priority topics in order to increase their professional competence on the issue of HIV-infection as well as expediency of holding training seminars for specialists of social care institutions contributing to development of their practical skills in work with HIV-positive clients.

HIV-infection, awareness levels, specialists of social work and social workers, stigmatization, self-perceived risk, prevention