Can medical staff have visible tattoos? A survey study among students

Abstract

Background: Tattoo is becoming a more and more common form of body decoration of people from representatives of various professions.The aim of this study was: what is the opinion of university students about medical staff having visible tattoos. Material and methods: The study was conducted among the students of four universities in Gdańsk. The questionnaire contained questions about the acceptance of visible tattoos in people working in medical professions. The respondents were also asked about their attitudes to tattoos as a form of body decoration and whether they had tattoos themselves. The statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software. Results: Filled-in questionnaires were obtained from 676 respondents, including 477 students of the medical university and 199 students of non-medical universities. The students who have tattoos themselves accept visible tattoos in healthcare professionals to a significantly greater extent (92%) than those who do not have tattoos, but the acceptance of visible tattoos in healthcare professionals in this group turned out to be very high too (75%). The respondents most readily accepted a visible tattoo on the skin of a laboratory diagnostician (75%). Conclusions: University students, regardless of their university profile, consider a visible tattoo as a completely acceptable phenomenon in healthcare professionals.