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