How HIV+ Persons Manage Everyday Life in the Hospital and at Home

Abstract

This article presents findings from an interview-based study of the ways persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) manage their illness in the hospital and at home. The present investigation supports an earlier study that isolated six management styles used in the hospital; summarized in terms of general patient identities, they are the loner, the medic, the time keeper, the activist, the mystic, and the victim. This study discovered another strategy, the forced loner, that is common among those PLHIV whose social environments or medical condition force them to curtail social engagements. The general tendency is toward the mystic management strategy as the conditions of PLHIV inevitably deteriorate and as previous efforts to exert control over the management and the course of their illness become futile. Implications of this study for nursing practice are discussed.