Prevalence Of Such Behaviors Research Articles

Addressing disruptive medical staff behavior: a 3-year experience.

Menezes et al. describe their experience with the diagnosis and management of disruptive medical staff behavior in a private hospital between 2020 and 2022. Surgical medical specialties were found to demonstrate the highest prevalence of such behavior, and continual education of physicians regarding appropriate workplace behavior was found to be the most important management strategy to prevent unsafe work environments and strengthen an appropriate culture of safety. ■ Disruptive medical staff behavior potentially affects patient care. ■ Surgical specialties have the highest incidence of disruptive medical staff behavior. ■ Proper diagnosis and management is key to the mitigating disruptive medical staff behavior. To describe the 3-year long experience of addressing disruptive events by medical staff in a private hospital. The cross-sectional study that was conducted between 2020 and 2022, involved collection, analysis, and management of suspected cases of disruptive behavior by medical staff. Relevant information was collected from reports issued by health care leaders (69%), anonymous reports accessed from the health institution's intranet tool "SINAPSE" (19%), the compliance center (5%), customer attendance service (3.7%), the hospital board (2.3%), and the medical practice department (1%). Surgical specialties were responsible for 70.3% of the disruptive incidents, and the average time to outcome was 24.5 days, with most solutions involving guided education of physicians (92.7%). Management of disruptive behavior by medical staff is essential for the prevention of unsafe work environments and strengthening a culture of safety.

On Customer (Dis-)Honesty in Unobservable Queues: The Role of Lying Aversion

Queues where people misreport their private information to access service faster are everywhere. Motivated by the prevalence of such behavior in practice, we construct a queueing-game-theoretic model where customers make strategic claims to reduce their waiting time and where the manager decides on the static scheduling policy based on those claims to minimize the expected delay cost in the system. We develop a lying-aversion model where customers incur both delay and lying costs. We run controlled experiments to validate our modeling assumptions regarding customer misreporting behavior. In particular, we find that people do incur lying costs, and we find that their misreporting behavior does not depend on changes in waiting times but rather, on the scheduling parameters. Based on the validated lying-aversion model, we study the equilibrium that arises in our game. We find that under certain conditions, the optimal policy is to use an honor policy where service priority is given according to customer claims. We also find that it may be optimal to incentivize more honesty by means of an upgrading policy where some customers who claim to not deserve priority are upgraded to the priority queue. We find that the upgrading policy deviates from the celebrated cµ rule. This paper was accepted by Elena Katok, operations management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.04036 .

Text mining domestic violence police narratives to identify behaviours linked to coercive control

Background and settingDomestic and family violence (DFV) is a significant societal problem that predominantly affects women and children. One behaviour that has been linked to DFV perpetration is coercive control. While various definitions have been proposed, it involves “acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten a victim” ranging from emotional to social and financial abuse. One potentially rich source of information on coercive control are police reports. In this paper we determine whether it is possible to automatically identify behaviours linked to coercive control from DFV police reports and present the prevalence of such behaviours by age and sex.MethodsWe modified an existing rule-based text mining method to identify 48 coercive control related behaviours from 406,196 DFV reports involving a single person of interest (POI) (i.e., an individual suspected or charged with a DFV offence) against a single victim from NSW Police Force records between 2009 and 2020.Results223,778 (54.6%) DFV events had at least one identifiable coercive control behaviour with the most common behaviour being verbal abuse (38.9%) followed by property damage (30.0%). Financial (3.2%) and social abuse (0.4%) were the least common behaviours linked to coercive control. No major differences were found in the proportion of DFV events between male and female POIs or victims. The oldest POI group (≥ 65 years) had the largest proportion for behaviours related to verbal abuse (38.0%) while the youngest POI group reported the highest proportion of DFV involving property damage (45.5%). The youngest victim group (< 18 years old) had the highest proportion of DFV events involving verbal abuse (37.3%) while victims between 18 and 24 years old reported the most harassment through phone calls and text messages (3.1% and 2.4% respectively); double that of those in the oldest (≥ 65 years) victim group (1.4% and 0.7% respectively).ConclusionsPolice data capture a wide variety of behaviours linked to coercive control, offering insights across the age spectrum and sex. Text mining can be used to retrieve such information. However, social and financial abuse were not commonly recorded emphasising the need to improve police training to encourage inquiring about such behaviours when attending DFV events.

Prevalence of gender-based and sexual harassment within orthopedic surgery in Canada.

Background:Gender-based and sexual harassment are prevalent in the medical profession. We aimed to quantify the prevalence of such behaviours within orthopedic surgery in Canada and to identify any risk factors for experiencing gender-based or sexual harassment in the workplace.Methods:In collaboration with the Canadian Orthopaedic Association, we conducted a Canada-wide email questionnaire survey in June 2019 of all orthopedic surgeons registered with the Canadian Orthopaedic Association and the Canadian Orthopaedic Residents’ Association. The development of our questionnaire was informed by a review of the literature and published surveys on gender-based and sexual harassment, and consultation with researchers in intimate partner violence. We conducted a multivariable logistic regression analysis to identify risk factors for harassment.Results:Of the 1783 surgeons invited to participate, 465 returned the questionnaire (response rate 26.1%); the response rate was 48.1% for females and 22.1% for males. Overall, 331/433 respondents (76.4%, 95% confidence interval [CI] 72%–80%) and 315/423 respondents (74.5%, 95% CI 70%–78%) reported having experienced at least 1 occurrence of gender-based and sexual harassment, respectively. Women were significantly more likely than men to have experienced both gender-based and sexual harassment (odds ratio [OR] 16.2, 95% CI 4.8–54.0, and OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.2–4.0, respectively). Respondents who identified as nonwhite were significantly less likely than those who identified as white to have experienced gender-based harassment (OR 0.5, 95% CI 0.3–0.99).Conclusion:The prevalence of gender-based and sexual harassment is high within Canadian orthopedic surgery, and women are at highest risk for experiencing harassment. The results may provide the impetus for orthopedic societies to develop action plans and to re-examine and enforce policies to address these damaging behaviours appropriately.

Using criminological theory to explain police misconduct: a state-of-the-art review

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the extant published literature using traditional criminological theories in an effort to explain police misconduct.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reflects a narrative meta-review of through a search of several academic databases (e.g. Criminal Justice Abstracts, Criminology: A SAGE Full Text Collection, EBSCO Host and PsychInfo). Twenty-nine studies, across six theoretical perspectives, were identified and reviewed.FindingsThe extant research generally suggests that traditional criminological theory is useful in explaining misconduct.Practical implicationsThe findings call on agencies to continually strengthen their recruiting and hiring processes to select recruits with suitable characteristics, and to improve their early warning systems to detect officers with patterns of problematic behavior. Also, the findings call for multiple avenues of future scholarship, namely, in theory development/integration and in refining the measurement of police misconduct.Originality/valueThis paper will be useful for researchers who wish to further explore the etiology of misconduct, and for police administrators who wish to reduce the prevalence of such behavior.

The Prevalence and Outcome of Disruptive Behaviors in Nurses and Physicians: A Descriptive Study in Iranian Health Care Context

Background: Disruptive behavior is any inappropriate behavior, verbal-physical abuse, and threats that a therapist performs unprofessionally that leads to a significant negative impact on clinical outcomes of patient care and staff collaboration. Objectives: This study was done to investigate the prevalence of disruptive behavior among nurses and physicians and its effects on the health care context. Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 248 medical staff in teaching medical centers affiliated with the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences participated. Data were collected employing a questionnaire with convenience sampling and analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive statistics. Results: Data revealed that 85.5% of the participants had experience disruptive behaviors from nurses and physicians. Also, 74 participants stated that the highest prevalence of disruptive behaviors by nurses and physicians were observed weekly, and 87% believed that these behaviors negatively influenced the treatment process. The probability of emerging problems, dangerous events, medical errors, the impaired patients’ safety, and a decrease in treatment quality sometimes occurs, though it often leads to dissatisfaction of the physician, nurse, and patient. In addition, 71% of the participants stated that there is no behavioral statute, and 89.1% believed that even if such a statute exists, there is no executive support. Conclusions: Due to the negative effects of disruptive behaviors and the prevalence of such behaviors among physicians and nurses, it is recommended to have a statute and management system that guarantees its implementation and train all the staff.

Disgust or Dignity? The Moral Basis of Harm Reduction.

Harm reduction has been advocated to address a diverse range of public health concerns. The moral justification of harm reduction is usually presumed to be consequentialist because the goal of harm reduction is to reduce the harmful health consequences of risky behaviors, such as substance use. Harm reduction is contrasted with an abstinence model whose goal is to eradicate or reduce the prevalence of such behaviors. The abstinence model is often thought to be justified by 'deontological' considerations: it is claimed that many risky behaviors are morally unacceptable, and therefore that we have a moral obligation to recommend abstinence. Because harm reduction is associated with a consequentialist justification and the abstinence model is associated with a deontological justification, the potential for a deontological justification of harm reduction has been overlooked. This paper addresses this gap. It argues that the moral duty to protect autonomy and dignity that has been advocated in other areas of medical ethics also justifies the public health policy of harm reduction. It offers two examples-the provision of supervised injection sites and the Housing First policy to address homelessness-to illustrate the argument.

Laypeople's Affective Images of Energy Transition Pathways.

This paper explores the public perception of energy transition pathways, that is, individual behaviors, political strategies, and technologies that aim to foster a shift toward a low-carbon and sustainable society. We employed affective image analysis, a structured method based on free associations to explore positive and negative connotations and affective meanings. Affective image analysis allows to tap into affective meanings and to compare these meanings across individuals, groups, and cultures. Data were collected among university students in Norway (n = 106) and Germany (n = 125). A total of 25 energy transition pathway components were presented to the participants who generated one free association to each component by indicating the first that came to mind when thinking of the component. Participants evaluated their associations by indicating whether they considered each association to be positive, negative, or neutral. These associations were coded by two research assistants, which resulted in 2650 coded responses in the Norwegian sample and 2846 coded responses in the German sample. Results for the two samples are remarkably similar. The most frequent type of association is a general evaluation of the component, for example concerning its valence or its importance. The second most frequent types of association are requirements needed to implement the component (e.g., national policies) and consequences of the component (e.g., personal or environmental consequences). Individual behaviors (e.g., walking) elicited thoughts about consequences and requirements, but also about the prevalence of such behaviors. Associations in response to technologies (e.g., carbon capture and storage) mainly referred to some descriptive aspect of the technology. Evaluations of the free responses were predominantly positive, but some components also elicited negative associations, especially nuclear power. The free associations that people generate suggest that they have vague and unspecific knowledge about energy transition pathways, that they process them in an automatic and intuitive rather than deliberative manner, and that they have clear affective evaluations of the presented components.

The prevalence and nature of sexual harassment and assault against women and girls on public transport: an international review

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report on the findings from a study commissioned by the British Transport Police and the Department for Transport for England and Wales concerning sexual offences and harassment on public transport worldwide. Specifically, it aims to explore the prevalence of such behaviours, through a review of existing survey and interview data regarding women and girls’ experiences.Design/methodology/approachA rapid evidence assessment (REA) was used, the function of which is to: search the literature as comprehensively as possible within given time constraints; collate descriptive outlines of the available evidence on a topic and critically appraise it; sift out studies of poor quality; and provide an overview of the evidence.FindingsIt was found that prevalence rates range from 15 to 95 per cent, with the UK having the lowest rates. Emerging economies had higher rates of harassment and assault, which may relate to differing cultural and gender norms, where public space is regarded as a male domain.Research limitations/implicationsA REA is not a full systematic review, differing in the scope and depth of the searches and depending almost exclusively on electronic databases, not accompanied by searching journals by hand.Practical implicationsMore research of high methodological rigour needs to be carried out on prevalence rates of sexual harassment and offending on public transport worldwide. The high prevalence rates found suggest the need for more work around the area of interventions to curtail offending in this setting. The findings suggest that emerging economies, in particular, need to do more to address the problem of sexual harassment and assault on public transport. More fundamentally, cultural norms around women’s roles in society need to be addressed and challenged.Originality/valueWomen may become “transit captive” and socially excluded if they are afraid to travel on public transport and do not have access to private transport. This would be an unacceptable situation which must be addressed by transport authorities and police.

The endocrinology of human caregiving and its intergenerational transmission

Variation in the quality of parental care has a tremendous impact on a child's social-emotional development. Research investigating the predictors of this variability in human caregiving behavior has mostly focused on learning mechanisms. Evidence is currently accumulating for the complementary underlying role of steroid hormones and neuropeptides. An overview is provided of the hormones and neuropeptides relevant for human caregiving behavior. Then the developmental factors are described that stimulate variability in sensitivity to these hormones and neuropeptides, which may result in variability in the behavioral repertoire of caregiving. The role of genetic variation in neuropeptide and steroid receptors, the role of testosterone and oxytocin during fetal development and parturition, and the impact of experienced caregiving in childhood on functioning of the neuroendocrine stress and oxytocin system are discussed. Besides providing a heuristic framework for further research on the ontogenetic development of human caregiving, a neuroendocrine model is also presented for the intergenerational transmission of caregiving practices. Insight into the underlying biological mechanisms that bring about maladaptive caregiving behavior, such as neglect and insensitive parenting, will hopefully result in more efficient approaches to reduce the high prevalence of such behavior and to minimize the impact on those affected.

Emergence of Shared Intentionality Is Coupled to the Advance of Cumulative Culture.

There is evidence that the sharing of intentions was an important factor in the evolution of humans’ unique cognitive abilities. Here, for the first time, we formally model the coevolution of jointly intentional behavior and cumulative culture, showing that rapid techno-cultural advance goes hand in hand with the emergence of the ability to participate in jointly intentional behavior. Conversely, in the absence of opportunities for significant techno-cultural improvement, the ability to undertake jointly intentional behavior is selected against. Thus, we provide a unified mechanism for the suppression or emergence of shared intentions and collaborative behavior in humans, as well as a potential cause of inter-species diversity in the prevalence of such behavior.

Nudging Bank Account Holders Towards More Secure PIN Management

The memorability of PINs is an enduring security issue. This is especially pertinent in the context of banking, where technical systems evolve more slowly than in other contexts (e.g. many mobile phone operating systems have adopted alternative authentication mechanisms). Banking customers who struggle to memorise all their PINs often record them, sometimes insecurely, flying in the face of advice from their banks. Banks respond to memorisation difficulties by permitting customers to change their PINs. The reality is that both recording and changing unwittingly weakens the mechanism by increasing predictability. Yet trying to forbid these coping strategies is futile. It is far better to acknowledge the prevalence of such behaviours and to try to nudge people towards more secure PIN management. In this paper, we suggest a way of achieving this.

Risky behaviors during cancer therapy: A report from the “Resilience in Adolescents and Young adults with Cancer” study.

e21035 Background: Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) development includes experimentation and sometimes engagement risky health behaviors; the prevalence of such behaviors among AYAs during cancer t...

Eating behaviours in adolescent girls: the role of body shame and body dissatisfaction.

Numerous studies are conducted to investigate factors influencing eating and weight-related problems, given the alarming prevalence of such behaviours among adolescents. The relationship between shame, especially body shame, and eating disorders has received increased attention in recent years. The current study contributes to this field by exploring body shame as a potential mediator of the relationship between body dissatisfaction and eating behaviours among adolescent girls, while controlling for age and body mass index (BMI). The participants, 187 adolescent girls from three secondary schools in Zagreb, completed self-report measures of demographic, eating behaviours, body satisfaction and body shame. Body shame and body dissatisfaction explained statistically significant amount of eating behaviours variance, while controlling for age and BMI. Further, body shame partially mediated the relationship between body dissatisfaction and eating behaviours. This study provides further evidence of the experience of body shame among adolescent girls and suggests that this shame is associated with disordered eating behaviours. Future longitudinal research designed to specifically explore body shame and other potentially shared risk factors is needed, and would enhance our understanding of eating disorder aetiology.

Clinical Misconduct Among South Korean Nursing Students

This study examines the extent and predictors of unethical clinical behaviors among nursing students in South Korea. From survey data of 345 undergraduate nursing students, unethical clinical behaviors were examined with respect to 11 individual characteristics, frequency and perceived seriousness of classroom cheating, two factors of individual attitude, and four contextual factors. Qualitative data from two focus group interviews were analyzed to explore reasons for and contexts of unethical clinical behaviors. About sixty-six percent of the participants engaged in one or more unethical clinical behaviors over a one-semester period. The prevalence of such behaviors varied widely from 1.7% to 40.9% and was related to the type of nursing program, the number of clinical practicum semesters completed, ethical attitudes toward cheating behaviors, the frequency of cheating on assignments, the frequency of cheating on exams, the perceived prevalence of cheating by peers, and prior knowledge of academic integrity. According to the regression analysis, the last four variables explained 29.4% of the variance in the prevalence of unethical clinical behaviors. In addition, multiple reasons and possible interventions for clinical misconduct were reported during the focus group interviews. Unlike cheating in the classroom, clinical misconduct was strongly induced by clinical nurses and poor clinical practice environments. In sum, unethical clinical behaviors were widespread among the participants and need to be corrected.

Motivational interviewing by HIV care providers is associated with patient intentions to reduce unsafe sexual behavior

ObjectiveMotivational interviewing (MI) can promote behavior change, but HIV care providers rarely have training in MI. Little is known about the use of MI-consistent behavior among untrained providers. This study examines the prevalence of such behaviors and their association with patient intentions to reduce high-risk sexual behavior. MethodsAudio-recorded visits between HIV-infected patients and their healthcare providers were searched for counseling dialog regarding sexual behavior. The association of providers’ MI-consistence with patients’ statements about behavior change was assessed. ResultsOf 417 total encounters, 27 met inclusion criteria. The odds of patient commitment to change were higher when providers used more reflections (p=0.017), used more MI consistent utterances (p=0.044), demonstrated more empathy (p=0.049), and spent more time discussing sexual behavior (p=0.023). Patients gave more statements in favor of change (change talk) when providers used more reflections (p<0.001) and more empathy (p<0.001), even after adjusting for length of relevant dialog. ConclusionUntrained HIV providers do not consistently use MI techniques when counseling patients about sexual risk reduction. However, when they do, their patients are more likely to express intentions to reduce sexual risk behavior. Practice implicationsMI holds promise as one strategy to reduce transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

Selected Ethical Issues in the Analysis and Reporting of Research: Survey of Business School Faculty in Malaysia

This study reports the perceptions of business school faculty on ethical behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting as well as the prevalence of such behaviors in their academic environment. Survey data for the study were obtained from a sample of 102 business school faculty from five government-funded universities in Malaysia. Study results showed that a majority of the respondents considered practices such as fabrication, manipulation, and distortion of data to be ethically unacceptable, and these behaviors were reported to be least prevalent. In contrast, the practice of misapplying statistical techniques was considered ethically acceptable and reported to be quite prevalent. On research reporting, although a majority of the respondents agreed that plagiarism and taking undeserved authorship credit were ethically unacceptable, they also reported having observed the frequent occurrence of such behaviors. Finally, practices such as cutting up research data and simultaneous submissions to more than one publication outlet at the same time were less likely to be viewed as unethical and seen to be quite a common practice. In general, the findings of this study indicate that the perceptions of the ethicality and frequency of occurrence of behaviors related to data analysis and research reporting vary among business school faculty.

ARE INVESTMENT EXPECTATIONS RATIONAL, ADAPTIVE OR REGRESSIVE?

I. INTRODUCTION Tests of the rational expectations hypothesis (REH) outside the experimental laboratory typically utilize two types of data: quantitative measures of expectations about publicly observed variables such as inflation, usually elicited from small samples of professional forecasters; and qualitative measures of expectations about privately observed variables such as personal income, elicited from large samples of households. Analyses of both types of data have produced varying levels of support for the REH. For example, Keane and Runkle (1990, 1998) find evidence in favor of the REH using the first type of data, while Bonham and Cohen (2001) in part overturn their results after accounting for the nature of cross-correlations inherent in a group of individuals forecasting the same publicly observed integrated time series. Next, using household survey data, Das and van Soest (1997, 1999) and Das et al. (1999) find evidence against the REH. In contrast, Benitez-Silva et al. (2008) furthered the econometric analysis of such data and presented evidence in favor of the REH. In employing publicly available professional forecaster data several concerns related to pooling, data revisions, and the possibility of signaling on the part of forecasters have been raised. (1) Further, Pesaran and Weale (2006) review a large and growing literature on survey expectations of households and the attendant econometric and substantive issues in analyzing qualitative response expectations data from such surveys. They conclude for myriad reasons that it remains the case that the analysis of individual responses to such surveys, and in particular to those who collect only qualitative information, is underdeveloped. These issues can be addressed in part by data on quantitative expectations about privately observed variables; this paper employs data from two new survey sources that provide such information. The resulting panel of 775 firms in Canada contains quantitative information on expectations about purchases of new machinery and equipment (investment), as well as realized levels of investment, over 7 yr. The data are particularly useful because they avoid some of the issues raised for previous studies and their analysis helps to contribute, on the firm side, to the agenda laid out by Manski (2004) who sees a critical need for basic research on expectations formation. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] Estimation results suggest that investment expectations are not rational if the assumed underlying loss function is assumed to be symmetric. That is, the usual unbiasedness and efficiency requirements for rational expectations, clearly elucidated for instance by Lovell (1986), do not hold for the collected data. Further, hypothesis tests on statistical models implied by conventional adaptive expectations do not suggest the prevalence of such behavior in the data. However, a particular version of such extrapolative expectations, namely, regressive expectations formation, does find support in the data. The paper is structured as follows. Section II discusses the data on 775 manufacturing plants over 7 yr that was compiled by merging two national surveys in Canada. In Section III, the statistical models (and attendant hypothesis tests) as implied by various expectations formation assumptions are described followed by their estimation results. Section V concludes. II. THE DATA Data were compiled from two confidential, proprietary surveys conducted by Statistics Canada: the Capital Expenditures Survey (CES) and the Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) over 7 yr (1986-1992). (2) The CES contains data on one-step ahead expected ([Expect.sub.it]) and realized (Actualit) capital expenditures on machinery and equipment (i.e., investment), and the ASM on shipments ([Shipment.sub.sit]). (3) Owing to the lumpy and long-term nature of construction expenditures, this variable was excluded. Finally, only manufacturing sector records were selected for both surveys. …

Population screening of risky alcohol and drug use via Internet and Interactive Voice Response (IVR): A feasibility and psychometric study in a random sample

BackgroundThe wide accessibility of computer-based technologies like the Internet and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems raises the question of whether population survey data could be collected more easily and cheaply compared to using paper questionnaires. In the area of possibly stigmatized behaviors such as problematic alcohol and drug use, the question extends to whether the prevalence of such behaviors in the general population could be surveyed without compromising the quality of the data. AimsThis study compares Internet and IVR versions of the AUDIT and DUDIT with respect to: (1) response rate, (2) problematic alcohol and drug use and (3) reliability. Method5000 individuals, randomly selected from the Swedish general population, were contacted via postal mail and invited to complete the AUDIT and DUDIT questionnaires via Internet or IVR. In total, 1861 (37.8%) participated in the study, 1089 via Internet and 772 via IVR. ResultsThe Internet administration mode yielded a higher response rate (38.1%) compared to the IVR mode (33.9%). When respondents were given a choice between Internet and IVR, a higher response rate resulted (43.2–46.6%). Problematic alcohol and drug use occurred among 21.1% and 2.8% of the sample, respectively, with no significant differences by administration mode. Both the AUDIT and DUDIT exhibited satisfactory reliability across administration modes, Cronbach's α 0.76/0.86. ConclusionsData quality does not deteriorate with computerized administration methods for the AUDIT and DUDIT in population studies but paper questionnaires should also be made available to respondents in order to maximize response rates.

Knowledge and attitudes of students in a caribbean medical school towards hiv/aids

Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome(HIV/AIDS) is seen as one of the most devastating infection/disease known to have attacked the human population. This study is aimed at assessing the level of knowledge, attitudes and misconceptions of the medical students in a Caribbean Medical School towards HIV/AIDS. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collate information. Out of 150 questionnaires distributed, 130 were filled, showing a response rate of 87% .The ages of the respondents ranged from 19-45 years with mean age of 26. Our finding shows that the knowledge of HIV/AIDS is high: 97.7%. HIV/AIDS associated beliefs: 22.3% sees the disease as a punishment for unfaithfulness or immorality. A negative attitude towards condom use was seen in 3.8% of the respondents. Risky behaviours were identified but the prevalence of such behaviours is low. Religion was identified to play an important role in the conception and misconception about condom usage and possibly transmission of the virus. Behaviour modification programmes is recommended to correct misconceptions among medical students. (Afr. J. Biomed. Res. 11: 137 - 143)Key Words; HIV/AIDS, Knowledge, Attitudes, Students, Caribbean, Medical School, Saint Lucia.