The HIV-Infected Health Care Professional: Public Policy, Discrimination, and Patient Safety

Abstract

Three years ago, I was invited by the Hastings Center to prepare a position paper asserting that patients had the right to be protected against exposure to HIV in health care settings. Believing, rather naively I fear, that I was being asked to defend the rights of patients, I happily accepted. My paper examined such areas as the patient's right to be informed if her surgeon was HIV-infected, along with the prevailing professional duty of health care providers to protect patients from avoidable harms. When I arrived at the debate forum, I looked up to see my friends—humane public health officials, civil libertarians, and AIDS activists—on the other side of the table. It dawned on me that the debate was not about patients’ rights at all, but about restricting the employment rights of HIV-infected health care professionals. Still, I argued at that time, and have continued to assert in the Centers for Disease Control review process, that HIV-infected health care professionals ought to refrain from the practice of seriously invasive procedures.