Homophobia, stigma and AIDS--an issue for all health care workers

The AIDS epidemic has brought with it some fairly terrifying images of chronic illness and death among the young. Along with those images are the tremendous feelings of impotence (if that is the right word to use when writing about AIDS) which such an unknown infection creates among health care workers, who are used to dealing with somewhat more manageable entities. Yet, in their everyday work, nurses have to deal with many illnesses which are not particularly easier to cope with than those affecting the AIDS patient. The big difference is that AIDS-related illnesses are less familiar and much more bound up in the moral and political framework of our society.