HIV/AIDS practice patterns, knowledge, and educational needs among Hispanic clinicians in Texas, USA, and Nuevo Leon, Mexico

• Main Authors: Martinez J. Louis, Licea Serrato Juan de Dios, Jimenez Richard, Grimes Richard M.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Spanish; Portuguese
• Published: Pan American Health Organization 1998
• Subjects: Medicine; R; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Public aspects of medicine; RA1-1270; Arctic
• Online Access: https://doaj.org/article/3c566f5b52d94adfbb27c519d33c7f17

Hispanic clinicians in Texas, United States of America, and in the neighboring state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, were surveyed to determine their educational needs in the area of HIV/AIDS. Two-thirds of the 74 Texan and 22% of the 104 Mexican physicians queried had seen at least one HIV/AIDS patient in the previous year. The majority of the respondents were primary care physicians who: 1) were in private practice; 2) saw more than 1 000 patients per year; 3) had been out of training for more than 10 years; 4) provided some HIV prevention education to patients based on their perceived risk of infection; 5) rated their own knowledge of HIV/AIDS as average but rated their knowledge of treatments for the disease below average; 6) received most of their information about HIV/AIDS from journals rather than formal continuing education programs; 7) thought Hispanic patients had special needs with regard to HIV/AIDS care; and 8) were willing to attend education programs to improve their HIV/AIDS management skills. The greatest barriers to caring for HIV patients were lack of clinical knowledge and fear of infection. These results point to a need for a large-scale training program to improve the HIV/AIDS management skills of Hispanic clinicians in Texas and Nuevo Leon.