Among Friends: Hospice Care for the Person with AIDS

Buckingham ( First American Hospice ), a physician in Good Thunder, Minn., and dean of the College of Health and Human Performance at Mankato State University, has spent 15 years treating terminally ill patients. Initially, his practice focused on cancer patients, but in recent years he has paid increasing attention to people with AIDS. Here the doctor re-evaluates the traditional medical attitude that views the dying as ``them'' and the living as ``us,''29 arguing instead for the treatment of patients and their families together--one of the basic tenets of hospice care. Once used primarily by cancer patients, hospices now provide those in the final stages of AIDS with a loving and caring environment where they can live out their remaining days. The book offers an overview of the AIDS hospice movement, from the history and philosophy of hospices to the unique difficulties of caring for AIDS patients: their fear of the AIDS illness, in its erratic progression, and its usual conclusion. Case histories cited are frustratingly brief--they don't give a personal sense of the AIDS patients or their families. But with the number of Americans afflicted with AIDS ? as is, suggests AIDS victims are members of a different race or species than the rest of us--the us/them outlook deplored above, right? expected to reach 480,000 by 1993109 , this book could not be more timely. (Apr.)