Thanks but I was only doing my job at the time. If anything I was frustrated I could provide nothing more than palliative care. Things have improved greatly.
Yea I'm not surprised a prominent London hospital was doing things a little better. I was very much NOT in London but a not too long train ride away. But VERY outdated, homophobic and discriminatory attitudes and behaviour by staff and the patient's friends/family in far too many instances.
I remember my first was while I was a student, by then we knew how it spread yet I was still being told to triple glove etc which I ignored. I got told off for sitting with this patient on my lunch break, I'd had a quick lunch in the staff canteen then came down to sit and chat with him cos he'd said that was when he felt loneliest, mealtimes. His family had disowned him years before, had been informed but didn't visit or even inquire about him. Friends gradually disappeared, partly I think as not wanting to face their own possible future in some cases? There's a somewhat rose tinted portrayal that the gay community "pulled together" at this time - not always the case. A lot of them just didn't want to know. A lot of denial going on.
Basis of the telling off? By just being in the room with him for any length of time I was supposedly putting myself AND "innocent patients" (yes that is verbatim AND was said in front of the patient!) at risk by such behaviour.
This was how people behaved then.
Regarding my own sexual behaviour, well the whole "scare" hit just as I was becoming a teen, by the time I was 16 transmission routes were well known and as @HomeschooIerRockthemicrophone says it was a death sentence still with even the supposed treatments being very hit and miss, plus people avoided being tested not only because of the stigma but because having such a thing on your medical records could very well lead to your not getting certain jobs, credit, life assurance, homes, or even medical treatment (there was a spate of dentists certainly private dentists refusing to treat anybody that they knew to be hiv positive that I was certainly aware of)
I have to say I feel that now we've gone too far the other way and treat it with far too much complacency.
Certainly I feel younger generations are very blasé about sexual health.
I've been tested a couple of times due to incidents but thankfully was always negative. Not an experience anyone should have to go through but too many do.