Critical Care Nurses on the frontline of the AIDS crisis in Australia

HIV and AIDS devastated communities across Australia in the 1980s and 1990s. In the midst of this profound health crisis, nurses were caregivers and activists, both on and off the wards, and played a central role in shaping an innovative public health approach to a virus that was shrouded in fear and prejudice. Nurses worked with communities to develop public health campaigns, advocated for their patients and – through their unions – opposed the efforts of doctors and surgeons to introduce traditional public health measures based on ‘ test and contain’ measures. Bringing together stories from across the country, historian Geraldine Fela documents the extraordinary care, compassion, and solidarity witnessed and experienced. Others shared painful memories of homophobia and prejudice, and some participated in unsettling and coercive aspects of Australia’ s response to the virus. Together, their stories paint a vivid and nuanced picture of HIV and AIDS nursing and shed light on an unexamined aspect of Australia’ s AIDS crisis.

Geraldine Fela is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Macquarie University in the Department of History and Archaeology. She is a social historian, her research traverses histories of gender and sexuality, labour, social movements and medicine. Her work examining the role of nurses during Australia’ s HIV and AIDS crisis has been widely awarded, including by the Australian Historical Association and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.

Author’ s notes Abbreviations Introduction 1 ‘ Poofs, junkies, whores’ : nursing a moral panic 2 Hearing the story differently: nurses and the politics of HIV 3 Blurring lines, changing relationships 4 Collaboration, coercion and the complicated politics of partnership: nurses and the ‘ Australian model’ 5 Nursing beyond the gaybourhood 6 Don’ t Be Shame, Be Game! Responding to HIV and AIDS in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities Afterword Acknowledgments Notes