Nursing course teaches how to deal with AIDS

Although graduates from the Nursing School can give medication, handle intravenous feedings, care for infections, and are well trained professionals, many still find it unsettling to work with AIDS patients. But Associate Nursing Professor Ellen Baer is hoping to change that. Last semester she started a course designed to train nursing seniors to care for this growing population. Each Nursing senior is required to take a senior case study. Baer's program, "Nursing 360: Nursing Practice with HIV Positive Patients," is one of three that was offered last semester. The program was funded by a $348,000 grant to be used over three years by the U.S. Public Health Service. The students work at Graduate Hospital dispensing what Baer has termed "the two T's -- talking and touching." Under this system the students are encouraged to talk with the patients about uncomfortable topics, including the disease, death and dying. The students are also encouraged to lose their fear of touching AIDS patients. AIDS is unique in that it requires nurses to heavily draw upon techniques of the past, Baer said. "In an ironic way, AIDS calls upon nurses for nursing care reminiscent of the pre-antibiotic 19th century," she said. "Palliation, comfort, support, diet, infection control and all the efforts of [Florence] Nightengale at Scutari are called forth by this disease. In this sense AIDS is the prototype disease for fulfillment of the promise of nursing." Although Nursing senior Heidi Nebelkopf does not plan to treat infectious diseases, she found the course to be rewarding and informative. "I specifically want to go into cardiac nursing, but it is pretty unrealistic to think that I will not run into an HIV-positive patient in my clinical practice," Nebelkopf said. Nebelkopf added that the course was very helpful in making her better understand her own personal feelings towards AIDS patients and the disease. "I really enjoyed it since it gave me the opportunity to explore some of the fears in dealing with HIV-positive adults, and where these fears come from," she said. Baer said programs of this type should be available to more nursing students. "With monumental incidence projections and media saturation campaigns, few nursing programs devote a proportionate amount of the undergraduate curriculum to theory or clinical practice with AIDS patients," Baer said.

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