AIDS education strategies: evaluating the fear response

1. Despite educational interventions, evidence suggests that negative attitudes about AIDS risk persist among clinical hospital staff. In diverse study populations, associations have been found between psychosocial phenomena and on the job accidents and injuries. 2. This article describes a pilot study to explore whether fearful attitudes of clinicians contribute to the adverse behaviors of needlestick injuries and mucosal splashes. The authors sought to demonstrate whether desensitization therapy would be effective in reducing fear response. 3. A serendipitous finding of the study was that organizational and interpersonal conflict frequently provoked fear and anxiety responses. There is a continued need to examine the domain of AIDS related fears among clinical staff, as well as a need to seek a better understanding of this fear as part of the tensions of organizational dynamics in hospitals. 4. Occupational health nurses working in hospitals are in a unique position to uncover relationships among all types of incidents that may indicate fear and anxiety among clinical staff.