Clinicians must avoid violating professional ethical principles and patients’ legal rights and they may not ever discriminate. So, what does that mean in practice?
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(3):229-236. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.3.ecas4-1603.
Introduction of an intervention that reduces the perceived risk of a given behavior may cause a person to increase risky behavior—this is called “risk compensation.”
The combination of low HIV literacy on the part of older adults and health care professionals’ assumption that they are at low risk leads to insufficiently early testing for HIV and late diagnosis.
Those who care for adolescents must advocate for timely disclosure of HIV diagnosis since the negative effects of late disclosure include social isolation, anxiety, loss of trust, and depression.