AIDS: a bill of rights for the surgical team?
Dudley, H.A.; Sim, A.
British Medical Journal 296(6634): 1449-1450
1988
ISSN/ISBN: 0267-0623 PMID: 3132288 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.296.6634.1449Document Number: 354028
The risk of HIV infection for surgeons remains, as far as is currently known, statistically extremely small but is different from and probably greater than that of the nonoperating clinician or the lab worker. A surgeon or any member of his or her team will not wish to place the HIV positive patient at risk from inadequate care. As with the patient's right to treatment, however, the team should also have some rights, whether or not they chose to exercise them. Among these rights might be the following: 1) To insist on standards in the operating room that are adequate to give the best protection to the surgical team from the risk of cross infection. 2) To reserve the right not to operate on patients known to have HIV or who are categorized as at high risk when circumstances might be unfavorable for any member of the team, always provided that an alternative surgeon is available. 3) To have the opportunity, if they so wish, formally to disclaim high risk in themselves, though the mechanism for this will be complicated. 4) To have blood withdrawn at regular intervals for storage against a future need to establish HIV state. 5) To have blood withdrawn and possibly analyzed at the time of and subsequent to a specific incident in which virus transmission was a possibility. 6) To have an HIV assay at their own behest. 7) To have the "signing on" for work and the insurance situation debated at greater length. 8) To request--and to insist--on testing for HIV of a patient involved in an injury to a surgeon.