The correlates of health facility-related stigma and health-seeking behaviors of people living with HIV

Objective@#This study aims to assess the presence of stigma in health facilities and health-seeking behaviors of persons living with HIV (PLHIV).@*Methods@#This study utilized a cross-sectional design employing self-report questionnaires answered online. A total of 100 PLHIV participants were recruited using the respondent-driven sampling method.@*Results@#Results revealed that most participants are young adult men who have been diagnosed with HIV within the last five years. Overall, participants display moderate health-seeking behavior (M = 2.94, SD = 0.54), and moderate experience of health facility-related stigma (M = 2.21, SD = 0.87). Further, there is a negative correlation between age and health-seeking behavior (r = −0.2796, p = 0.049). The type of facility is significantly correlated with HIV stigma (r = 0.4050, p = 0.036).@*Conclusion@#A sustained linkage to care is essential for a PLHIV to remain engaged on his health and well-being. Necessary strategies should be implemented to improve the health-seeking behaviors of PLHIV. Public Rural Health Units are considered to be the most stigmatizing health facility. The presence of health facility-related stigma requires immediate action of the government to reinvigorate these catchment centers as providers of stigma-free and nondiscriminatory primary health care.

A bibliometric analysis of the Philippine Journal of Nursing for 1966 - 2017

@#<p style="text-align: justify;">The PJN has served its purpose as a venue for both Filipino and foreign nurses to publish their original articles, reflection, commentaries, and other scholarly written works on the key areas: nursing practice and nursing education. Marking its 51st year, the aim of this = study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis and report publication trends of PJN for the period of 1966-2017. VOSviewer® analyzed the bibliometric characteristics of PJN using the corpus extracted from the Scopus® bibliographical database. There were 724 published documents. Among them, there were 606 original articles, 43 editorials, 22 reviews, 21 conference papers, 18 short surveys, 10 notes, and 4 letters. VOSviewer® facilitated the cluster analyses without the need to have an in-depth knowledge of clustering techniques and without requiring advanced computer skills. From this, the auto-generated themes were reviewed along with the PJN 's aims/objectives such as "nursing," "human," 'health' "primary health care," 'nurses" "nursing education," and healthcare "organizations" that are apparent during the publication period between the1970s to 2010s. Various researchers both in the academic and service institutions published their works in PJN that emulate vital communication patterns in the specific fields that the journal embodies. For this reason, the authors should be instructed to list their affiliations with proper accreditation to ensure accurate publication accurate author citation history, co-authorship citations, and other bibliometric indicators. The PJN will continue to support all the researchers in the local and international community to achieve one common goal - to advance and sustain the culture of scholarship in nursing.</p>