Thank you for sharing your personal experience with partner notification and positive HIV status. I am happy to hear that this scenario went to your hospital's ethics committee. I now work at a small community hospital that does not have a ethics committee however I formally worked at a large medical facility that did have one. These committees in health care facilities play pivotal role in intervening when ethical dilemmas arise regarding medical treatment options and end- of-life care (Kawashima, 2016). Despite the outcome of your experience, it is great that the interdisciplinary team at your facility collaborated on this case attempting to convince the patient to reveal her status to her intimate partner.
I would like to explore what would make an individual to not report their positive status to others. Several motivators of not reporting often stems from fear of diagnosis, stigma related to HIV positive persons, the affected striving to regain normalcy after the diagnosis, or in rare cases malicious intent. Although there are many more reasons that one may choose not to report, the fact that their 'right' to disclose remains. …show more content…
Social workers and counselors work in the role of both public health servant and patient advocate. Referencing your post, social workers worked to convince the patient to disclose but with little effect. Protecting other members of society is priority, the Ryan White Care Act enacted in 1990 ask that public health departments in some states make an attempt in good faith to contact intimate partners of the affects over the last 10 years ("HIV Reporting and Partner Notification Questions and Answers- Procedural Questions,"
I would like to explore what would make an individual to not report their positive status to others. Several motivators of not reporting often stems from fear of diagnosis, stigma related to HIV positive persons, the affected striving to regain normalcy after the diagnosis, or in rare cases malicious intent. Although there are many more reasons that one may choose not to report, the fact that their 'right' to disclose remains. …show more content…
Social workers and counselors work in the role of both public health servant and patient advocate. Referencing your post, social workers worked to convince the patient to disclose but with little effect. Protecting other members of society is priority, the Ryan White Care Act enacted in 1990 ask that public health departments in some states make an attempt in good faith to contact intimate partners of the affects over the last 10 years ("HIV Reporting and Partner Notification Questions and Answers- Procedural Questions,"