AIDS care: providing care for the HIV infected.

To meet the needs of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected individuals, innovative approaches to health care delivery have been developed that could affect the entire worldwide medical care system. Innovations include dedicated inpatient and outpatient AIDS treatment and research units, extensive community service organizations, active volunteers, hospices, visiting nurses, AIDS information hot lines, confidential testing sites, outpatient infusion centers, integration of research and clinical care, and new roles for health professionals including AIDS as an unofficial medical subspecialty. Patient care has replaced medical care, and nurture and technology must coexist when a cure cannot be assured. Physicians expecting choice in patients they care for must accept HIV; staggering health care costs, a sorely taxed public care system, fear of infection or medical inadequacy, declining nursing school enrollment, decreased interest in primary care medical specialties, a dwindling supply of community volunteers, and sparse extended care facilities hamper our efforts to provide for AIDS patients. However, the abundance of vacant hospital beds, the social and scientific challenge of AIDS care and research, employment opportunities, and a new generation of health care professionals accepting AIDS as part of the challenge of medicine all offer hope for change. In AIDS, we have the opportunity to strike an alliance between the art of healing and the advanced technology of modern medicine. In doing so, we will all face our own mortality.