An evaluation of community nursing services for HIV/AIDS patients in Lothian, Scotland

This paper reports on a postal questionnaire survey of district nurses' work with HIV positive patients. Each nurse was asked to provide information about their contact with HIV positive patients and the level of training they had received in HIV/AIDS care. The nature of nursing activities carried out for these patients was established along with levels of confidence the nurses had in being able to provide a high standard of care. Where the nurses indicated less than full confidence they were asked to indicate what factors predisposed their response. Questionnaires were completed by 101 district nurses. On average, each nurse made 1.25 visits to HIV-infected patients in the two weeks preceding the study. The nursing activities most commonly carried out for these patients were providing advice/counselling, carer support, general nursing care and specialist treatments. The activities least commonly carried out were technical procedures, tests and assessments. Nurses were most confident in providing a high standard in relation to general nursing care and least confident that high standards were being achieved in providing specialist treatments. The most frequently encountered explanations offered by the district nurses for their lack of confidence in achieving a high standard were a lack of specialist training and a lack of experience with HIV-infected patients.