Eliminating Perceived Stigma and Burnout among Nurses Treating HIV/AIDS Patients Implementing Integrated Intervention

Stigma is essentially one of the most important barriers to public action, disease disclosure and treatment adherence, worse even it gets exacerbated when those who provide treatment hold stigmatizing attitudes or at the receiving end of stigma. Stigma is of global concern and it requires an intensive integrated approach across all levels to eliminate it from healthcare settings for the betterment of patients and nurses. Objective: The present study intended to explore whether there were significant association between Perceived Stigma and Burnout Syndrome among nurses treating cancer patients and nurses treating HIV/AIDS patients and the extent to which the Integrated Intervention facilitates eliminating Perceived Stigma and Burnout. Methods: Around 120 nurses treating HIV/AIDS patients were selected from a sample of 240 nurses working in government hospitals in Chennai. Later, the Nurses were classified into two groups – as Experimental Group (N=30) and Control Group (N=30) treating HIV/AIDS patients in Government Hospitals. Their level of Perceived Stigma was measured using the HASI-N developed by Uys and others and burnout level was assessed using questionnaire developed by Maslach. The comprehensive Integrated Intervention covering cognitive restructuring, Jacobson’s Progressive Muscle Relaxation, yoga and mindfulness meditation, etc was administered exclusively to the Experimental Group of Nurses for the duration of three months. The required data on Perceived Stigma and Burnout levels were measure at three phases of time period – pre and post period of the administration of Integrated Intervention. Results: In this study, these two categories of nurses were tested at three points of time (pre-test, post-test and follow-up). The within-subjects factor was the three phases of testing (pre-test, post-test, and follow-up) of the variables under investigation or time and the between-subjects factor was the two Category of nurses. Therefore, a mixed model factorial ANOVA was used to analyse differences over time and between the two categories of nurses Conclusions: There were significant differences among nurses treating HIV/AIDS patients with regard to stigma and burnout.