Care engagement with healthcare providers and symptom management self efficacy in women living with

Chen et al. BMC Public Health (2022) 22:1195

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13573-3

RESEARCH

Care engagement with healthcare providers

and symptom management self-efcacy

in women living with HIV in China: secondary

analysis of an intervention study

Wei‑Ti Chen1*, Chengshi Shiu1,2, Lin Zhang3* and Hongxin Zhao4*

Abstract

Background: Symptom management self-efcacy is a prerequisite for individuals to fully manage their symptoms.

The literature reports associations between engagement with healthcare providers (HCPs), internalized stigma, and

types of self-efcacy other than symptom management. However, the factors of symptom management self-efcacy

are not well understood. This study aimed to investigate the relationship among engagement with HCPs, internalized

stigma, and HIV symptom management self-efcacy in Chinese women living with HIV (WLWH).

Methods: This current analysis was part of the original randomized control trial, we used data collected from 41

women living with HIV (WLWH) assigned to an intervention arm or a control arm from Shanghai and Beijing, China, at

baseline, Week 4 and Week 12. The CONSORT checklist was used. The study was registered in the Clinical Trial Registry

(#NCT03049332) on 10/02/2017.

Results: The results demonstrate that HCPs should increase engagement with WLWH when providing care, thereby

improving their symptom management self-efcacy. The results suggested that participants’ engagement with HCPs

was signifcantly positively correlated with their HIV symptom management self-efcacy in the latter two time points.

Internalized stigma was signifcantly negatively correlated with HIV symptom management self-efcacy only at the

4-week follow-up.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated the positive efect of engagement with HCPs on WLWHs’ symptom manage‑

ment self-efcacy as well as the negative efect of internalized stigma on symptom management self-efcacy. Future

research can further test the relationship between the three key concepts, as well as explore interventions to decrease

internalized stigma.

Keywords: Healthcare providers, HIV, Self-efcacy, Symptom management, Stigma, Women

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Introduction

As of 2018, there were approximately 850,000 people liv￾ing with HIV (PLWH) in China [1]. Of those, about 28.6%

were female [2]. Te major transmission route for HIV

among women in China is heterosexual contact, with

the majority of infections happening outside the mari￾tal relationship [3]. Other transmission routes include

blood selling and injection drug use [4]. In addition to

Open Access

*Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected];

[email protected]

1

School of Nursing, University of California Los Angeles, 700 Tiverton Ave, Los

Angeles, CA 90095, USA

3

Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University,

Shanghai 201508, China 4

Clinical and Research Center of Infectious Diseases, Beijing Ditan

Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing 100015, China

Full list of author information is available at the end of the article