ANAC’s Core Curriculum, 2/e

The Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (ANAC) presents information that every practitioner needs to know on HIV/AIDS. Essential to the care of this disease, topics cover specialized nursing information such as case management, ethical and legal concerns, infection control, and patient education. It also reviews physical examination, symptomatic conditions and management, and HIV testing.

ANAC’s Core Curriculum, 2/e offers nurses ways to help patients handle their own health by preventing transmission, healthcare follow-up, managing anti-retroviral therapy, and improved adherence to prescribed regimes. Several topics vital to HIV/AIDS care include:

• a historical overview of the HIV pandemic
• HIV infection, transmission, and prevention
• common conditions experienced by patients with HIV/AIDS
• long-term success in the health of patients infected with HIV
• clinical management of the HIV-infected infant, child, adolescent, and adult
• emerging and future trends in HIV disease epidemiology

Chapters offer key details of symptomatic conditions, AIDS indicator diseases, and comorbid complications. They describe how to manage anorexia/weight loss, cognitive impairment, cough, dyspnea, dysphagia, oral lesions, vision loss, and more.

Sections discuss the special needs of pediatric patients including, nutritional concerns, risks associated with treatments, and clinical problems such as developmental delay. Topics also feature special populations, such as commercial sex workers, healthcare workers, older adults, pregnant women, and the incarcerated.

A detailed section on psychological assessment offers information with the psychosocial concerns of both patients and their significant others, including partners, spouses, families and friends. It reviews how to help clients cope with the initial diagnosis, transitional issues such as safer sex and depression, and coming to acceptance.

Essential for those new to HIV/AIDS care, as well as for those with years of experience in infectious diseases, ANAC’s Core Curriculum, 2/e is a concise reference for clinical, symptomatic, and psychosocial management of adults, adolescents, children, and infants within all stages of HIV/AIDS.