Geraldine Fela’s account of nurses on the frontline of Australia’s AIDS crisis brought home to me the emotions and practicalities that nurses experienced during the early days of HIV/AIDS nursing; these were consistent with those I had while nursing at Melbourne’s Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital at that time.
The stories and heartfelt reflections of those interviewed for the book tell of the adversity, experiences and policies of the times. What clearly comes through is the advocacy and tenacity of the nurses and their union (through its iterations as the RANF and ANF, and the NSWNA), which demonstrated that nurses’ work during the HIV/AIDS epidemic – often in defiance of some of our medical colleagues and policymakers at the time – had a ripple effect throughout the profession.
I was struck by the parallels between the ‘test and contain’ policies that nurses and midwives experienced in some Australian jurisdictions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the mindset of Australia’s policymakers and politicians in the mid-1980s during the AIDS epidemic. Fela has highlighted that while healthcare in this country has come a long way since the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the work of nursing and midwifery unions continues to advocate and lobby on behalf of their members for rational healthcare and workplace rights that incorporate sound occupational safety policies and that put patient care at the centre of all that our professions strive to achieve.
