HIV Archives - Page 3 of 3

A Primary Source Reminder from the Early Days of HIV/AIDS

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week, I received a press release from the National Institutes of Health noting the publication 30 years ago of the first ‘official’ report that many consider to have heralded the beginning of the AIDS epidemic—a report in the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report), a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma in otherwise healthy young men who all happened to be gay.

This report (which included various causative theories, including speculation that the weakened immune system among these gay men might somehow have resulted from the use of lifestyle drugs such as amyl nitrate!), seemed late in coming for those of us who’d been seeing unusual infections among gay men since the mid-1970s.

In 1975, I became aware of these young men when they started coming for diagnostic consultation with the physicians I worked with in a private hematology–oncology practice in New York City. No one could figure out why they had developed opportunistic infections that were normally seen only in patients who’d been on chemotherapy or who had other immune disorders. We talked about the fact that similar cases were being seen at the (now defunct) St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Greenwich Village. […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:12:48-05:00June 6th, 2011|Nursing|2 Comments

Reporting from ICN: Japanese Nurses Take on Disaster; Swaziland Saves its Nurses

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

In a special press briefing held at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting in Valetta, Malta (see my recent blog posts), on Wednesday, May 4, I had the opportunity to listen to two incredible stories of instances where nurses—or, in one case, a nurse—stepped up to deliver despite extremely trying circumstances.

Nurses do this all the time, and it’s important to recognize and highlight these situations because they make visible the value nurses bring to delivering health care and developing innovative health models.

After the tsunami. Japanese Nurses Association (JNA) president Setsuko Hisatsune (in photo) spoke of the rapid mobilization of nurses following the earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan on March 11. She explained that while the JNA had had a disaster system in place since the 1995 Kobe earthquake, this disaster, followed by the widespread destruction from the tsunami, was unprecedented.

“We could not imagine this,” she said. […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:13:18-05:00May 6th, 2011|Nursing|5 Comments

What’s Ugly? — And Other Crucial Conversations for Nurses

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Our monthly Art of Nursing department—often, a poem or image somehow related to health care—is a unique feature for a scholarly publication, but one we feel strongly about. We believe that in order to provide truly holistic care, nurses need to know about more than evidence-based clinical content—they also need to be aware of many other aspects of the human experience.

One thing art teaches us is that people don’t always see things the same way. What’s beautiful, illuminating, or at least useful to one person may be ugly or offensive to another. Consider billboards with public health messages. To some, such a billboard may seem to be an eyesore blotting the landscape; to others, the image and message is a powerful tool for disseminating life-saving information. Our September 2010 Art of Nursing (click through to the PDF version) showcased billboards in Guinea-Bissau, a poor country with HIV prevalence of epidemic proportions. The billboards, photographed by Dawn Starin (here’s a blog post she wrote about them), are used to encourage people to get tested. A blog post by AJN senior editor Sylvia Foley about the column noted concerns some had expressed about these billboards:

Are the billboards effective? Starin writes, “Although the billboards are fabulous to look at, many health professionals I spoke with thought they exemplified time and money wasted, in part because of the high nationwide illiteracy rate.” One health worker emphasized the need for more culture-specific studies on sexual practices and tradition, so that appropriate education […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:13:30-05:00April 18th, 2011|Nursing|12 Comments

Why Do Needlestick Injuries Still Haunt Us 10 Years after Protective Legislation?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

In 2008, a survey by the American Nurses Association (ANA) indicated that 64% of nurses reported a needlestick injury. That startling figure was reported by Marla Weston, CEO of the ANA, in her opening remarks last week when the ANA relaunched “Safe Needles Save Lives,” its campaign for use of safe needles in the workplace. The campaign originally launched ten years ago and was instrumental in passage of Public Law 106-430, the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act, which requires employers to “identify, evaluate, and make use of effective safer medical devices.” And while there have been inroads towards use of safer needle systems, the 2008 data show that much needs to be done.

Speaking from experience. Karen Daley, the ANA president, has long been a leader in advocating for safer needle systems. She sustained a needlestick injury while working in the ER a decade ago and contracted hepatitis and HIV infection. Her home state, Massachusetts, has been in the forefront of legislation. According to Angela Laramie from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, all hospitals in Massachusetts are mandated to use sharps injury prevention devices, maintain a log of any injuries, and submit an annual report to the state. Yet, state data show an average of 3,000 needlestick injuries yearly—and more than half of these are with devices that lack safe […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:15:02-05:00November 8th, 2010|Nursing|7 Comments

Comic Book Superheroes Meant to Raise AIDS Awareness Raise Some AJN Readers’ Ire

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

Back in January I posed the following question: “Is doing something as silly (and, to some, either sexist or demeaning) as this justified in the name of increasing awareness about a disease?” In that post, I was referring to the bra-focused tactics of a light-hearted campaign intended to raise breast cancer awareness. Along those lines, our March cover has received a lot of attention; unfortunately, not all of it has been positive.

Our goal was to draw attention to our two CE features of the month: “Every Nurse Is an HIV Nurse” and “Aging with HIV: Clinical Considerations for an Emerging Population.” As Shawn Kennedy, interim editor in chief and editorial director at AJN, points out in this month’s editorial, “AIDS awareness in this country seems to have diminished—in fact, for some, it hardly seems a concern at all. A recent CDC report on risk behavior in adolescents found that during 2007, 39% of sexually active high school students ‘had not used a condom during last sexual intercourse.’”

I asked Robert Walker to provide us with this month’s cover art after meeting him through a mutual friend. Through his comic book series O+Men, about nine HIV positive superheroes, he has been getting a lot of recognition for promoting HIV and AIDS awareness. For more information about Walker, read this month’s On the Cover in AJN, or listen to an interview with Walker on National Public Radio.

While […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:18:50-05:00March 11th, 2010|Nursing|1 Comment