Publication Date:
2024-04-11
Description:
As part of the United Kingdom’s response to the escalating HIV/AIDS crisis during the 1980s, special wards and community-based services were established to care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PWHA). Much of the pioneering and innovative care developed at these centres can be attributed to nurses. However, UK nursing history has hitherto neglected to tell their stories. This chapter rectifies this omission by drawing on a wealth of source material including previously unseen, enlightening, and frequently moving oral histories, as well as archival and news media sources, to explore the actions and perceptions of the UK nurses who cared for PWHA, alongside the reflections of PWHA and their loved ones who received this care. 〈br /〉This chapter reveals how assertive PWHA took control of their own care, often becoming experts on their condition – a phenomenon that challenged ideas of medical paternalism by reclaiming decision-making power in the name of the patient. We explore questions of ethics and socialisation by analysing how nurses were similarly tasked with deciding what actions were permissible in times of crisis – decisions made along the frequently blurred lines that this crisis drew between private and professional lives. Appreciating the personal draw that HIV/AIDS care had to nurses who identified as queer in particular, and the sense of duty this often evoked, offered a meaningful way of interpreting the research gathered for this chapter. Last, this makes an important contribution to the documented history of nurses’ experiences and constructions of the care of individuals belonging to stigmatised groups.
Keywords:
nurses; HIV/AIDS; expert by experience; nursing history; responsible subversion; stigma; courtesy stigma; oral history; activism; queer
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thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MB Medicine: general issues::MBX History of medicine
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thema EDItEUR::M Medicine and Nursing::MJ Clinical and internal medicine::MJC Diseases and disorders::MJCJ Infectious and contagious diseases::MJCJ2 Medicine: HIV/AIDS, retroviral diseases
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thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology
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thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999::3MPQ Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999
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thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European history
Language:
English
Format:
image/jpeg
Format:
image/jpeg
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