Hospice education about people with AIDS as terminally ill patients: Coping with a new epidemic of death

Hospice care for patients with AIDS often differs from care provided to patients with other terminal illnesses, such as cancer. We designed a seminar series to educate regional hospice staff about these differences and subsequently determined if the educational intervention was associated with improvements in their AIDS-related knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors toward patients with AIDS. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from seminar participants (n = 63) and a similar comparison group (n = 18) at several time points. Seminar participants significantly improved their AIDS-related behaviors (p.05); and there was a trend toward knowledge improvement. Qualitative data shed light on the quantitative findings. Participants verbalized better understanding of the relatively aggressive care often given to terminally ill patients with AIDS when it enhanced quality of life.