HIV infection and community midwives: experience and practice

To assess the effects of HIV infection on the work of community midwives, a postal survey of 1 in 5 in Scotland and England was carried out. The 907 respondents represent an 83% response rate. While only 1% of respondents had experience of patients with AIDS, 8% had been involved with known asymptomatic HIV infection and 32% had encountered those that they considered to be 'at high risk'. While the workload generated by HIV-infected patients for individual midwives at this time was small, almost all midwives themselves considered that they had a role to play in the prevention of HIV infection through health education and in counselling. While less than a quarter of those who had encountered HIV-positive patients had provided health education, more than half had done so to those worried about HIV infection and almost a quarter had counselled them. However, confidence to provide these aspects of practice was low, even among those who had received in-service education, although higher than among those who had not done so. A minority of community midwives had read policies or guidelines about aspects of practice and service provision, except for infection control where two thirds had read what they considered an adequate policy.