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  "Conditions in society which are not defined as a problem and for which alternatives are never proposed, never become policy issues. Government does nothing and conditions remain the same."
 T.R.Dye, Policy Analyst
(From the book "Understanding Public Policy"
 

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Medical Stigma

     

Topics and/or research reports can be found near the bottom of this page. Thank you

     

"Dentists have a legal obligation to treat HIV-infected individuals, including patients of record and other persons who seek treatment when the office is accepting new patients. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (AwDA) and many similar federal, state and local laws, a person with HIV is considered as having a "disability," as are persons who are perceived to have HIV, which may include patients who have had blood transfusions and openly homosexual patients. at should be noted that HIV is only one of many infectious diseases that are considered as disabilities under the AwDA and similar laws; e.g., hepatitis B and tuberculosis are also treated as disabilities). In a case decided shortly before the publication of this text, the first federal court ruling on a charge of HIV discrimination against a dentist upheld the constitutionality of the AwDA.

The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 is a federal law that protects persons with disabilities, including individuals with HIV and/or AIDS, from discrimination on the basis of their HIV and/or AIDS status, including discrimination in the provision of dental care. ff you feel you have been discriminated against in the provision of dental care because of your HIV and/or AIDS status, you should call the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. at 1-800-514-0301." Dental Management of the HIV-Infected Patient

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES:

 

Document Name & Link to Document

Description

File Size /pdf

Are Pharmaceutical companies Addressing-stigma

Recommends that treatment efficacies be made known to the public in efforts that model the public relations and marketing communication practices of other healing disciplines

Pdf 270 kb

Attitudes to & management of HIV/AIDS among health workers in Ghana: the case of Cape Coast municipality Health Care Workers as key players in the prevention and management of diseases and important opinion and community leaders have become targets for studies, more so with the outbreak of HIV.  Their perceptions, attitudes and practices have implications for the management of diseases in both health centres and communities. 39 kb pdf

Cure versus care

The term 'Quality of Life' is often heard... and said at the Hospice to remind us of our main aim and purpose. As most of our patients have been diagnosed with a terminal disease, further treatment is often inappropriate and cure is not always an option.

 

Death a Result of Insufficient Care

Poor staffing was the reason cited for the death of Mike Hurewitz, the living liver donor at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, who died after a portion of his liver was transplanted into his brother.

 

Dental Management of the HIV-Infected Patient

Because the law is evolving and varies in some respects from state to state, dentists are advised to consult with their own personal attorneys for legal advice. That said, the easiest way to avoid legal problems - and to lessen the need for legal advice - is for dentists to treat HIV-infected patients just like they treat their other patients.

 

Dentists shun HIV patients Many dentists are refusing to treat people with HIV even though there is no risk of transmitting the disease if safety procedures are correctly followed. Experts have warned that continuing discrimination may force people with HIV to keep their condition hidden - which could cause problems if dentists fail to take adequate care. Research conducted by BBC News Online found seven out of 30 dentists contacted refused to commit to treating a person with HIV.  
Discriminatory Attitudes and Practices by Health Workers toward Patients with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria Nigeria has an estimated 3.6 million people with HIV/AIDS and is home to one out of every 11 people with HIV/AIDS worldwide. This study is the first population-based assessment of discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in the health sector of a country. The purpose of this study was to characterize the nature and extent of discriminatory practices and attitudes in the health sector and indicate possible contributing factors and intervention strategies. The study involved a cross-sectional survey of 1,021 Nigerian health-care professionals (including 324 physicians, 541 nurses, and 133 midwives identified by profession) in 111 health-care facilities in four Nigerian states.  
Discriminatory Attitudes and Practices by Health Workers toward Patients with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria Nigeria has an estimated 3.6 million people with HIV/AIDS and is home to one out of every 11 people with HIV/AIDS worldwide. This study is the first population-based assessment of discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS in the health sector of a country. The purpose of this study was to characterize the nature and extent of discriminatory practices and attitudes in the health sector and indicate possible contributing factors and intervention strategies. The study involved a cross-sectional survey of 1,021 Nigerian health-care professionals (including 324 physicians, 541 nurses, and 133 midwives identified by profession) in 111 health-care facilities in four Nigerian states. Pdf 522 kb
Do people with HIV/AIDS disclose their HIV-positivity to dentists? Not disclosing one’s HIV status to the dentist, though, can have serious consequences, such as finding oneself deprived of care adapted to one’s state of health, whether it be because of a lack of systematic screening for oral lesions associated with HIV infection, an error in diagnosis, an inappropriate choice of treatment, or a risk of secondary infection related to certain treatments. 66 kb pdf

Doctors' and Nurses' Knowledge and Attitudes

This report presents responses to AIDS-related questions from a national sample of 958 physicians and 1,520 registered nurses in 1990-91. Questions included willingness to treat AIDS patients and whether they believe that they were professionally obligated and should be legally required to do so, attitudes toward homosexual men and intravenous drug users, knowledge about HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) transmission, perceptions of the risk of HIV contagion, precautionary practices, trust in HIV authorities, career plans, and attitudes toward mandatory testing and mandatory reporting.

 

Guidelines for National Human Immunodeficiency Virus Case Surveillance, Including Monitoring for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

CDC recommends that all states and territories conduct case surveillance for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection as an extension of current acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) surveillance activities. The expansion of national surveillance to include both HIV infection and AIDS cases is a necessary response to the impact of advances in antiretroviral therapy, the implementation of new HIV treatment guidelines, and the increased need for epidemiologic data regarding persons at all stages of HIV disease.

 

Healthcare Workers

By the end of the 20th century, 33.6 million men, women and children had been infected with HIV.  AIDS is clearly one of the greatest public health challenges of the era and, whilst there are continuous calls for a multisectoral response to the epidemic, there is abundant evidence that that response must, in most instances, be led by dedicated, committed health care workers

Pdf 431 kb

Hepatitis C virus-infected patients (41%) report communication problems with physicians "...The current study demonstrated that more than one-third of patients diagnosed with HCV infection perceived interaction difficulties with physicians. Nearly one-half of the patients with conflict reported being misdiagnosed or inadequately treated and questioned the competence of their physicians. In addition, patients perceived negative attitudes and a feeling of disrespect from their physicians. This led to a feeling of being stigmatized, mistreated, or abandoned in more than one-fifth of those reporting such difficult interactions....."  
HIV/AIDS EMPLOYMENT POLICY AND PROCEDURE The NHS in Wales recognises that as an employer and a public health body it has a duty to counter discrimination and stigma against people who are or may become HIV positive or who have AIDS. This duty includes employees of Local Health Boards. It recognises the need to protect patients, to retain public confidence, and to provide safeguards for the confidentiality and employment rights of HIV infected health care workers. Pdf 23 kb
HIV/AIDS and cultural issues Health professionals, including medical students, have to learn to face and fight HIV and AIDS and deal with its medical and psychosocial effects.  In combating the disease and the stigma that surrounds it, education remains the best approach. 539 kb pdf

JACHO: Delays in treatment 

While hospital Emergency Departments (EDs) are the source of just over one-half of all reported sentinel event cases of patient death or permanent injury due to delays in treatment,

 

PHENOMENOLOGY

Phenomenology is a movement in philosophy that has been adapted by certain sociologists to promote an understanding of the relationship between states of individual consciousness and social life. As an approach within sociology, phenomenology seeks to reveal how human awareness is implicated in the production of social action, social situations and social worlds

 

Philadelphia Settles Lawsuit Over Alleged Discrimination Against HIV-Positive Man by EMTs The city of Philadelphia on Monday settled a civil-rights lawsuit over alleged discrimination against an HIV-positive man who said that city emergency medical technicians provided inappropriate care after they leaned his HIV status  
STIGMATIZATION AND ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE IN LATIN AMERICA: CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES Stigma associated with mental illness produces a series of adverse conditions that can result in exclusion in health. From the perspective of health systems, however, this phenomenon has not been widely studied. Hence the purpose of this study is to establish the importance of stigma as a barrier to access to the health services, and to identify ways to reduce exclusion in health due to stigma that go beyond the protection of the rights of the individual and place it within the framework of the extension of social protection in health. Pdf 62 kb

The Discriminatory Attitudes of Health Workers against People Living with HIV

 

The results suggest that some health-care professionals discriminate against and stigmatise PLWA. For instance, 9% of professionals reported refusing to care for a patient with HIV/AIDS, and 9% reported that they refused a patient with HIV/AIDS admission to hospital. Two-thirds reported observing other health professionals refusing to care for a patient with HIV/AIDS, and 43% observed others refusing a patient with HIV/AIDS admission to hospital.  

THE PSYCHIATRIC NOSOLOGY OF
EVERYDAY LIFE: CATEGORIES IN IMPLICIT
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY

A basic assumption of constructionism is that knowledge originates in social interchanges. That is, people's everyday knowledge about "the way things are" is not given by the real world but is the result of an ongoing process of communication: People speak, write, and use signs and symbols actively and cooperatively and end up creating "reality" out of negotiated understandings.

 

 

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