As part of the United Kingdom’s response to the escalating HIV/AIDS crisis during the 1980s, special wards and community-based services were established to care for people living with HIV/AIDS (PWHA). Much of the pioneering and innovative care developed at these centres can be attributed to nurses. However, UK nursing history has hitherto neglected to tell their stories. This chapter rectifies this omission by drawing on a wealth of source material including previously unseen, enlightening, and frequently moving oral histories, as well as archival and news media sources, to explore the actions and perceptions of the UK nurses who cared for PWHA, alongside the reflections of PWHA and their loved ones who received this care. This chapter reveals how assertive PWHA took control of their own care, often becoming experts on their condition – a phenomenon that challenged ideas of medical paternalism by reclaiming decision-making power in the name of the patient. We explore questions of ethics and socialisation by analysing how nurses were similarly tasked with deciding what actions were permissible in times of crisis – decisions made along the frequently blurred lines that this crisis drew between private and professional lives. Appreciating the personal draw that HIV/AIDS care had to nurses who identified as queer in particular, and the sense of duty this often evoked, offered a meaningful way of interpreting the research gathered for this chapter. Last, this makes an important contribution to the documented history of nurses’ experiences and constructions of the care of individuals belonging to stigmatised groups.
As the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s recedes from popular memory, researchers are once again beginning to engage with the subject from historical perspectives. This collection brings together some of the exciting new work emerging from this resurgence, addressing essential but much less well-known histories of HIV/AIDS. Focusing on regions of Western Europe, Histories of HIV/AIDS introduces aspects of the epidemic from places including Scotland, Wales, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Switzerland, and draws attention to the experiences and activities of often-overlooked people: sex workers, drug users, mothers, nurses, social workers, and those living and working in prisons. It also examines the challenges, opportunities, and risks at the heart of how we archive and remember this epidemic. Highlighting the importance of understanding local and national contexts, transnational interactions, and heterogeneous forms of policy, activism, and expertise, it encourages attention to the complexity of these histories and their ongoing importance today. Of particular interest to historians of modern Europe and health, area studies specialists, and those working with archives and museums, this book is an essential addition to HIV/AIDS studies and histories.