Background:
Health workers’ attitudes toward immigrant patients influence behaviour, medical decisions,quality of care and health outcomes. Despite the increasing number of immigrant patients inhealth services and the potential influence of health workers’ attitudes, there is little researchin this area. This study aimed to examine attitudes of different health workers’ groups towardimmigrant patients and to identify the associated factors.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study was conducted with a random sample of 400 health workers fromprimary health care services in the Lisbon, Portugal, region. Among those, 320 completed astructured questionnaire. Descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis wereused for the evaluation of data.
Results:
Most participants did not agree that immigrant patients tend to behave like victims, but abouthalf considered that some are aggressive and dangerous. Doctors and nurses showed morepositive attitudes than office workers. Among doctors, the older ones reported less positiveattitudes compared to the younger ones. Health workers who have less daily contact withimmigrants revealed more positive attitudes. Most participants evaluated their knowledge andcompetencies to work with immigrants as moderate or low.
Conclusions:
Although health workers reveal positive attitudes, this study reinforces the need to developstrategies that prevent negative attitudes and stereotyping in health services. Efforts should bemade to improve workers’ competencies to deal with culturally diverse populations, in orderto promote quality of health care and obtain positive health outcomes among immigrantpopulations.