Book – Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia’s AIDS Crisis

Author: Geraldine Fela^[1]
Publisher: UNSW Press
Reviewer: James McNab

The recent times of Covid 19 have shown us that not all heroes wear capes. At time, nurses and other health professionals went into unknown levels of danger to help others. They were brave, no medals, just the occasional thank you.

This, however, was not the first time in recent history where nurses and other health professionals went to work, putting aside their own fears of harm, to help others.  A generation or so before the bravery of our nurses during Covid 19, there was the bravery and dedication of nurses who cared for people struck down during the height of the HIV/ AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s and 1990’s.

At that time, there was no effective treatment. Being diagnosed with the disease was a death sentence.

The book is written from oral history interviews undertaken between 2017 and 2021 with 33 nurses. The nurses who were interviewed worked in various areas during the height of the epidemic such as prisons, clinics and rural and large metropolitan hospitals. They share their lived experiences from that time.

The book traverses the emergence of the epidemic and the impacts that it had on all areas of society including patients, their families, politics and public health. It speaks to the challenges of the disease and its response in Indigenous communities and rural and regional areas. It interestingly discusses the role that unions also played in supporting nurses advocating and undertaking public health campaigns around the disease. These health campaigns were opposed by many in the medical profession.

This book catalogues the work nurses did, the care and compassion that was shown without judgment, when knowledge about the disease was limited, fear was extreme, and homophobia and prejudice was rife.

The book provides a great insight into the role nurses played caring for patients with HIV/AIDS during those very frightening and, indeed, sad times during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The book is somewhat strangely uplifting and provides faith in humanity. It really shows that nursing is indeed “the caring profession”.

In short, the book is great read.

[1] Geraldine Fela is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Macquarie