Nurses' Anxieties about Biohazards as a Function of Context and Knowledge¹

Abstract

Final-year nursing students (N = 96) described their anxieties about biohazards, not only in relation to the occupational context of a hospital ward, but also in relation to their general life context. These contexts were reported to vary in the extent to which they permitted control over exposure to the two particular biohazards chosen for study: human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis B virus (HBV). The data showed that nurses' anxiety about contracting HIV infection varied significantly across the two contexts, while anxiety about contracting HBV infection did not. In the general life context, anxiety about HIV was greater than anxiety about HBV for all subjects. This difference was significantly greater for those with incorrect knowledge about objective HIV seroconversion rates than for those with correct knowledge.

The Appraisal of Life Events (ALE) scale: Reliability and validity

“…Shalit, 1977). This indicates that the predictions made by the transactional model are not always generic and that the nature of the situation may need to be given more consideration when hypotheses are being formulated (Ferguson & Cheyne, 1995;Ferguson, Cox, Farnsworth, Leiter & Irving, 1994). Lazarus & Folkman (e.g.…”

The Occupational and Psychosocial Impact of SARS on Academic Physicians in Three Affected Hospitals

“…Although the psychosocial and occupational effects of health care worker exposure to blood-borne viral agents such as HIV, [11][12][13] hepatitis B, 14,15 and other infectious agents have been investigated, SARS presents a new challenge for health care workers. Despite the lower mortality rate of SARS when compared with HIV, 16 SARS is much more communicable in health care settings through droplet-based transmission.…”

Sex and Sexual Orientation

“…Further, perceived risk is a component of common sense models of illness (Leventhal, Meyer, & Nerenz, 1980) and shares considerable theoretical overlap with primary appraisals in contemporary stress models (Ferguson et al, 1994). Perceived risk has also been shown to be linked to varying health behaviours (Harrison, Mullen, & Green, 1992;Janz & Becker, 1984), including HIV preventative behaviors (Allard, 1989;Aspinwall et al, 1991;Becker & Joseph, 1988;Solomon & Dejong, 1989).…”