Level of Prejudices among Health Care Providers

The present paper presents findings of a an effort to develop a scale to measure prejudice of health providers against people living with AIDS( PLHA) and then use it to investigate the detriments of their prejudice. The scale developed was reliable on Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient at 0.88. The intrinsic validity based on Cronbach's Alpha Coefficient was 0.94. The study was carried out in Vadodara city, Gujarat. A structured tool was used to measure prejudices and the level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS. A sample of 50 doctors, 58 paramedics and 25 lab technicians were interviewed. The study shows that a higher percent of the paramedics (31 percent) than doctors (14 percent) reflected strong prejudices towards PLHA. Doctors reflected prejudices when it came to treatment/services, whereas paramedics reflected prejudices also with regard to family and social interaction, besides treatment/services. Female health providers exhibit higher level of prejudice than men. Application of logit regression revealed that training/ orientation in HIV/AIDS and correct knowledge of HIV/AIDS are the two strongest covariates of prejudice. Providers who had correct knowledge of HIV/AIDS had less prejudice as compared to those who had less or incorrect knowledge. It indicates that orientation of health providers and providing them correct information about the disease could go a long way in reducing prejudice of health provider against PLHA