RFC-funded training boosts HIV care and understanding

The charity funded a series of bespoke training sessions to improve Royal Free London staff’s awareness and understanding of HIV.

In the UK, more than 105,000 people are living with HIV. Medical advances mean they can live a long and healthy life, but the condition is misunderstood by many. 

Dr Linda Vaccari spoke to us about her motivation for setting up the charity-funded training sessions.

She said: ​“HIV is now a chronic infection that is very manageable, and people have a normal life expectancy if it’s diagnosed early, so we should reduce the stigma by increasing the level of knowledge and the empowerment that staff feel about supporting their patients who are living HIV.”

Dr Vaccari had previously conducted a survey with a range of Royal Free London staff which showed some areas of knowledge that required updating and enhancing.

She explained: ​“The survey results warranted some sort of urgency of action. There’s published literature describing the fact that focusing on increasing knowledge around HIV helps reduce stigma.”

The training was offered in two parts: 

• an interactive e‑learning session and a face-to-face group exercise focusing on transmission risks and the many existing strategies to reduce these, the importance of using person-first, non-judgemental terminology and exploring the potential impact of stigma on people’s experience of, and engagement with healthcare.
• strategies to reduce transmission risks.

People living with HIV participated in the sessions to tell their stories and answer questions.

Dr Vaccari said: ​“Involving people with lived experience is really important. It’s much more authentic for someone with lived experience to tell their story and explain what the impact of stigma can be. Their stories are very powerful and have been shown to significantly impact how much people take away from these sessions.”

After the training sessions, Dr Vaccari conducted another survey analysing how staff have reflected on their learning.

She said: ​“There has been a significant improvement in both the level of knowledge and confidence that people have in managing people living with HIV, which is great. It was overwhelmingly very, very well received.

“It was really amazing that the charity supported this work, and it has been really crucial because it’s allowed us to deploy a training programme that’s specifically dedicated for staff but ultimately will also benefit patients.”

The Royal Free London’s Ian Charleson Day Centre offers world class care for those living with HIV. The centre has access to a range of clinical trials including those for new antivirals, primary HIV infections and questionnaire-based studies with a dedicated research team.