C. Bennett et A. Weale, HIV AND AIDS AWARENESS - AN EVALUATION OF A SHORT TRAINING-PROGRAM FOR MIDWIVES, Journal of advanced nursing, 26(2), 1997, pp. 273-282
In response to a Department of Health, England, circular encouraging p
olicies of named voluntary antenatal HIV antibody testing, one West Mi
dlands health authority in England introduced a policy of raising the
issue preactively at the first antenatal attendance, In order to facil
itate this policy a short staff education programme was provided for m
idwives. This paper reports on part of a study which aimed to evaluate
the impact of the HIV awareness training programme, A sample of midwi
ves (n = 65) was randomly selected for inclusion in the study. Thirty-
three had attended training and 32 had not, Data were collected using
a self-administered questionnaire exploring knowledge of aetiology of
HIV/AIDS, knowledge of transmission, knowledge of obstetric and paedia
tric HIV, attitudes to HIV, issues related to antenatal HIV antibody t
esting and opinions about the HIV awareness training programme. Result
s indicated no significant difference in levels of knowledge or in att
itude between those who had attended the training programme and those
who had not. Similarly, no significant difference was found in terms o
f how midwives would react to women requesting HIV antibody testing. M
any of the results contradict the current literature and as a conclusi
on it is suggested that there is a need to review HIV-related training
for midwives.