my name is Miray and i am a nursing student in Lebanon. I have a presentation to make about homosexual patients and the care they receive by nurses so i need some help. If anyone has ever cared for a homosexual (male/female) then can you tell me what you did? how you reacted? and what you could have done to care for that patient better?
the answers can be anonymous if you want and this is not a topic of who is with or against i just want to show my classmates how people react differently to some situations.
I just want to comment on the AIDS epidemic and healthcare worker reactions if I may. I was born in the mid-80s so I obviously was too young to notice any of this first hand. But a huge part of me just wants to give my fellow healthcare workers the benefit of the doubt, as far as not being so darn heartless and close-minded.
Could it be that they treated AIDS patients differently mostly because they didn't UNDERSTAND the disease? I mean, no one really knew about it then. 30 years later and some people still think you can get AIDS from someone by being breathed on...Maybe I am just overly optimistic, but it seems like a lot of the attitude might have just been from a lack of understanding and just fear in general rather than being judgmental. That being said, I realize that there would have been some nurses who were just cruel that way.
I recently had my first transgender patient... I kept stumbling over 'him' vs 'her' in 3rd-person references (or is that 2nd-person?) but tried to as genuine and sincere as I could in addressing him/her as the gender which s/he identified, anatomical issues notwithstanding.
S/he was pretty miserable, and also kind, so it was a simple matter to let my compassion guide the interaction but it was an eye-opener to my own biases.
I just want to comment on the AIDS epidemic and healthcare worker reactions if I may. I was born in the mid-80s so I obviously was too young to notice any of this first hand. But a huge part of me just wants to give my fellow healthcare workers the benefit of the doubt, as far as not being so darn heartless and close-minded.
Could it be that they treated AIDS patients differently mostly because they didn't UNDERSTAND the disease? I mean, no one really knew about it then. 30 years later and some people still think you can get AIDS from someone by being breathed on...Maybe I am just overly optimistic, but it seems like a lot of the attitude might have just been from a lack of understanding and just fear in general rather than being judgmental. That being said, I realize that there would have been some nurses who were just cruel that way.
The mode of transmission, from body fluids of all kinds, was well-known. The evidence and usefulness of personal protective gear was well-established. As a matter of fact, the hospital in which that man died was the originator of blood and body fluid precautions, now called standard precautions. It was prejudice pure and simple. They had every opportunity to "understand" and chose not to care.
Hey, thanks guys for sharing a huge part of history. I didn't ever think of how it must have been in hospitals, during the 80's AIDs Period. I will value that tidbit about the New York Hospitals. I wish more Nurses would Author- it sickens me to thank we could loose these great stories- I wish I knew how to Archive- I would journal stories out of you guys until you hated me! You got a fan in Boston:)
uRNmyway, ASN, RN
1,080 Posts
I just want to comment on the AIDS epidemic and healthcare worker reactions if I may. I was born in the mid-80s so I obviously was too young to notice any of this first hand. But a huge part of me just wants to give my fellow healthcare workers the benefit of the doubt, as far as not being so darn heartless and close-minded.
Could it be that they treated AIDS patients differently mostly because they didn't UNDERSTAND the disease? I mean, no one really knew about it then. 30 years later and some people still think you can get AIDS from someone by being breathed on...Maybe I am just overly optimistic, but it seems like a lot of the attitude might have just been from a lack of understanding and just fear in general rather than being judgmental. That being said, I realize that there would have been some nurses who were just cruel that way.