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Investigating patients' attitudes toward receiving care from an opposite‐gender nurse
Author(s) -
Sharifi Salar,
Valiee Sina,
Nouri Bijan,
Vatandost Salam
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
nursing forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.618
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1744-6198
pISSN - 0029-6473
DOI - 10.1111/nuf.12556
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , descriptive statistics , medicine , psychology , test (biology) , nursing , significant difference , family medicine , nursing care , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , communication , biology
Background The imbalance in nurse‐to‐patient ratio and limited physical space may lead to care provision by a nurse of the opposite gender. On the other hand, the relationship with the opposite gender in Iran is limited due to cultural and religious beliefs. The aim of this study was to investigate patients' attitudes toward receiving care from the opposite gender nurse. Material and Method This descriptive cross‐sectional study was carried out on 200 patients admitted to different hospital wards. The patients were recruited using convenience sampling. Data collection tools comprised of a demographic questionnaire and a researcher‐made questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SPSS (version 16) and running descriptive statistics (i.e., χ 2 , independent t test, and linear regression analysis). Results Male and female patients had 31.8% and 42.6% negative attitudes toward receiving care from the opposite gender, respectively, indicating a statistically significant difference ( p = .05). Patients' attitudes had a significant and positive relationship with age, level of education, and experience of receiving care from a nurse of the opposite gender. Conclusion A significant percentage of patients had a negative attitude toward receiving care from the opposite‐gender nurse. Since people's attitudes affect their relationships, it is necessary to provide conditions for assigning the same gender nurse for patients and improving patients' attitudes toward nurses of the opposite gender.