Definition
It is well documented and understood that healthcare personnel are at times at risk for occupational exposure to blood-borne pathogens including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). While accurate, and an appropriate concern, this topic deserves to be unpacked and better examined to fully understand the implications of this risk among healthcare workers.
To start, a healthcare worker (HCW) is any healthcare personnel working in the medical or dental fields, or providing related services in an inpatient, outpatient, or community setting. Approximately 7% of the US labor force are health services employees (Bell 1997). These HCWs are employed in a great variety of workplaces which can include emergency departments, inpatient units, urgent care clinics, primary care settings, healthcare facilities in correctional settings, tuberculosis, STD, or substance abuse clinics, outpatient facilities, public health department clinics, skilled nursing facilities, community clinics, etc....
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Graves, E. (2018). Health Care Workers, Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS. In: Hope, T.J., Richman, D.D., Stevenson, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of AIDS. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7101-5_240
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7101-5_240
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