Introduction:

The increase in the number of HIV cases in the population of young people and adolescents, and the low effectiveness shown by the health interventions for the prevention of this infection in Chile, has led that institutions like Universities, perform the assessment of risky sexual practices and attitudes regarding HIV in order to identify possible self-care deficits that may be subject to intervention.

Objective:

The objective of the study was to analyze the attitudes towards HIV / AIDS and sexual practices in nursing students of a public University in Chile.

Methods:

The research is quantitative, observational, cross-sectional and with correlational analysis, which included 126 students between the first and the fifth year of studies. As a data collection technique, the Attitudes towards AIDS Scale for Adolescents (VIH-as) was used, whose alpha of Cronbach is 0.77. The analysis was carried out using the SPSS program, version 20.

Results:

It was evidenced that the majority of students (97.6%) reported a favorable attitude toward HIV both in prevention and inclusion of people living with the virus, nevertheless, a predominance of risky sexual practices could be observed, due to the 80.2% refers to not having used a condom in the total of their relationships.

Conclusions:

The attitudes reported by the students were the expected considering their future role as a nursing agency, however, risky sexual behaviors place them in self-care deficit, which requires the application of the supportive-educative systems.