Determining attitudes of a group of nurses working in the northern region of Turkey towards LGBT individuals

Abstract

Purpose: The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes of a group of nurses towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out with 358 nurses working in a hospital in the northern region of Turkey between December 2016- February 2017. The data were collected using the personal information form and the Hudson and Ricketts Homophobia Scale. Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney U test, Single Factor Variance Analysis, ttest and correlation were used in the analysis of the data. Ethical approval was obtained from the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of an university. Results: The mean score of the scale of the nurses was found as 111.5±20.7. Nurses who stated that they did not want to communicate with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were found to be more homophobic than the nurses who stated that they wanted to communicate with them. It was also found that the nurses who define themselves as ‘traditional’ were more homophobic than those who define themselves as ‘not traditional’ (p <0.05).The relationship between the nurses' knowledge towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual individuals and their attitudes towards these individuals was found to be significant similar to the previous international studies. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that the level of education, the level of acquaintance with LGBT individuals and the knowledge of LGBT individuals has an effect on the homophobic attitude

Under the same rainbow: A study on homophobia and discrimination among private sector health care professionals

“…Like this study, a study carried out in Turkey examining the nurses’ attitudes towards LGBT people reported that most of them were not familiar with LGBT people and that one‐third did not want to provide care to LGBT patients. A more striking result in the same study was that one‐fourth of the nurses associated the concept of LGBT with 'disease, perversity, crime and sin' (Soner & Altay, 2020). Unlike previous studies, our study found that health professionals were quite willing to care for LGBTQ+ people.…”

“…I will respect the dignity and religious beliefs of the patients under my care' (Tornyay, 1989). However, previous studies have found that this is not always the case in practice (Soner & Altay, 2020; Yilmaz & Gocmen, 2015).…”

“…However, these laws do not protect LGBTQ+ people against discrimination and stigmatization (Yertutanol et al., 2019). Social stigmatization, discrimination and negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people are intense in Turkish society due to its social and cultural structure (Bilgic et al., 2018; Soner & Altay, 2020).…”

“…Health professionals can be reluctant to work with LGBTQ+ people (Chapman et al., 2012). A study of the nurses’ attitudes towards LGBT people in Turkey found that most of them did not have sufficient knowledge about LGBT people and their health problems (Soner & Altay, 2020).…”

“…Studies of the attitudes of health care professionals towards LGBTQ+ people have been conducted in Taiwan (Hou et al., 2006), the United States (Klotzbaugh & Spencer, 2014) and Austria (Bennett et al., 2017). Very few such studies have been conducted in Turkey, and they have focused on single professional groups such as psychologists (Tuna, 2019), nurses (Soner & Altay, 2020) and university students (Bilgic et al., 2018; Cirakoglu, 2006; Daştan, 2015). No studies on this topic have been conducted with health professionals of different disciplines or in Turkey's private health sector.…”