UNMC
integrates
AIDS facts
into classes
By Jeremy Fitzpatrick
he medical, dental and nursing
schools in the University of Ne
braska have have to adjust their
curriculum and clinical procedures
to deal with the changing nature of health
care because of AIDS, officials said.
Gerald Moore, assistant dean of cur
riculum for the college of medicine at the
University of Nebraska Medical Center,
said the college had been integrating the
study of HTV and AIDS into regular course
work since the virus was discovered.
Moore said students
were introduced to the
virus in classes during
their second year of
medical training. In
their third and fourth
years, students work
in clinics where they
supplement their edu
cation about AIDS by working with pa
tients who have the disease.
The most significant change in the
college’s curriculum, he said, is AIDS
day. All second-year medical students
participate in the day devoted entirely to
AIDS.
James Booth, an assistant professor of
pathology and microbiology at UNMC, is
in charge of the yearly AIDS day. He said
the idea came from a conference he at
tended at the University of Pennsylva
nia.
Booth said the day was filled with
lectures, speeches and. panels on AIDS.
It begins with a survey administered
to the students to gauge their knowledge,
beliefs and opinions about AIDS. The
students take the survey again before
they graduate to test how their opinions
have changed, he said.
Students then listen to speakers and
panels. This year, Booth said the keynote
speaker would be John Kern, a lawyer for
San Francisco General Hospital. Kern
will speak on legal and ethical issues
concerning AIDS.
Students also will hear from a panel on
people who live with the disease. Three or
four people who have been infected with
HIV will speak, and students will have
more than an hour to question them on
any topic.
Booth said the panel had an impact on
the students.
“It is a very emotional time,” he said.
“It has the attention of the students....
These are real patients."
Todd Kendall, a third-year medical
student who participated in AIDS day
last year, said it was an eye-opening
experience for him.
Kendall said he had known about the
“nuts and bolts” of AIDS before AIDS day.
But he had never met someone with the
disease.
“I think it brought it down to a very
personal level,” he said.
Kendall said the panelists were very
open with students and gave them the
chance to ask a lot of questions.
He said talking to the panelists helped
him understand that AIDS was not lim
ited to a particular group of people.
“Unfortunately, because AIDS is asso
ciated with one type of people, oftentimes
society and physicians and physicians
to-be forget tnere are a lot of people who
can contract the disease.
“It really opened my eyes that there
are a lot of different people who can come
to you with the disease,” he said.
The Nursing College also has
changed its curriculum to deal with
AIDS.
Roberta Kroeger, an assistant
professor in the Nursing College, said a
knowledge of AIDS and HIV was essen
tial for anyone who graduated from the
college. ,
“It’s a serious health problem, and our
students — it’s important that they leave
the curriculum with a very sound knowl
edge of AIDS, and how to deal with it, and
how to prevent it in their work situations
and in their lives,” she said.
Kroeger said the nursing college had
integrated AIDS studies into all of its
courses. While no new classes have been
added to deal with AIDS, she said, the
content of regular classes has been ex
panded to cover the disease.
"V
“We have intensified our teaching quite
a bit,” she said.
Students learn about the disease itself
in their first-year classes, she said, and
then learn about teaching AIDS preven
tion in their senior year.
The college also makes sure that stu
dents are aware of all new information on
AIDS, Kroeger said.
“We are always keeping extremely
current on research and treatment, and
integrate that information throughout
all our courses,” she said.
David Brown, associate dean for
academic affairs in the College of
Dentistry, said HIV had height
ened the college’s awareness
about protecting against the transmis
sion of all infectious diseases.
But the college’s curriculum has not
significantly changed because of HIV, he
said, because the college has been teach
ing about infectious disease transmission
for years.
However, he said the college’s dental
clinics had updated their procedures to
protect against the transmission of infec
tious diseases.
“The HIV virus has made a difference
in what we are doing, but it really stimu
lated us to do what we should have been
doing all along,” he said.
Stephen Leeper, dean of the college,
agreed that AIDS had pushed dentistry
into using infectious disease protection
measures it should have used before. He
said that before HIV was documented,
Hepatitis B had been the primary con
cern of dentists.
Leeper said the American Dental As
sociation had tried to get dentists to take
measures to protect against Hepatitis B
since the 1960s. When AIDS — a disease
for which there is no known cure — was
documented, he said, dentists were forced
to take those protective measures.
“AIDS has frightened the dental pro
fession into doing Swhat it should have
been doing before,” he said.
Michael Molvar, associate dean of clin
ics for the dental college, said clinics
followed guidelines set down by the Centers
for Disease Control. The guidelines con
tinually are updated.
Molvar said the college followed uni
versal precautions, which assume that
all patients treated in its clinics could be
infected with HIV. Gloves, masks, eye
protection, disinfection or sterilization
when possible and clinic gowns are used
in the dentistry clinics, he said.
The college adopted most of its proce
dures before they were required by the
CDC, Molvar said.
“We consider ourselves to be a leader
in infection control in dentistry and in
modeling infection control for the state,”
Molvar said. “We have taken that upon
ourselves.”
Last October, a Creighton University
dental student who nad worked in
Creighton’s dental clinics tested positive
for the HIV virus.
Jim Nolan, university spokesman for
Creighton, said a panel of the student’s
physician, an infectious disease special
ist, the dean of the dental school, the
school’s clinics director and the vice presi
dent for health finances formed a com
mittee to look for a way the student’s
education could be completed.
The student then withdrew voluntar
ily between the fall and spring semester.
Nolan said all of the 47 patients the
student treated were offered free AIDS
counseling and testing. None of them
have tested positive for the disease, he
said.
Creighton already was following the
same CDC universal precautions m its
1
— ••
Unfortunately, because AIDS is associated with one type of
people, oftentimes society and physicians and physicians-to-be
forget there are a lot of people who can contract the disease.
— Todd Kendall,
third-year medical student at UNMC
- -
Robert Borzekofski/DN
clinics that the UNMC used, Nolan said,
so it did not revise its clinical procedures
because of the student testing positive for
HIV.
He said some clinic patients were
concerned about contracting the disease,
and dental students contacted their pa
tients to tell them thev weren’t the stu
dent with the virus and explain that they
were not in danger.
“We tried to be as forthcoming as we
could, so we could alleviate as much fear
as possible,” he said.
Molvar said that UNMC’s Dental Col
lege was motivated by the incident to
review its policies for students working
in its clinics who tested positive for HI V.
He said the Dental College decided to
continue its practice of judging cases of
students with HIV on a case-bv-case basis.
“Cases are evaluated on tbeir merits,
and decided in the best interests of the
patient and anyone else that is involved,”
he said.
No student in the Dental College has
tested positive for HIV, Molvar said. If
one does contract the virus, he said the
college would “try to make a rational
decision based on the facts.”
Molvar said students working in the
clinics had been concerned about con
tracting the disease during the outbreak
of the virus. He said there still is concern,
but it is now tempered by knowledge of
the disease.
“I think they have a healthv concern,
which leads them to protect themselves
and their patients,” he said. “I think we
have done a good bit to discuss infection
control, to discuss HIV and hepatitis. . .
and when they understand the concern, I
think there is healthy concern, but it’s
not a phobia.”
Despite the psychological ettects
AIDS has on persons with the
disease, John Berman, chairman
of the psychology department at
UNL, said the department had not changed
its curriculum to deal with AIDS.
Berman said the curriculum hadn’t
changed because there weren’t enough
cases of AIDS in the Midwest to necessi
tate a change.
“The curriculum around here is
not changing — there is just not^^
enough numbers,” he said.