Despite these issues, nurses and other health care
providers have been relatively silent regarding the
criminal prosecution of PLWH. The research that
has been done related to HIV criminalization has
been done by legal advocates or groups advocating
for the well-being of PLWH. This limits nurses’ abilities
to share their understandings of the influence of
criminal prosecutions of PLWH and the effects it has
on their clinical practices. HIV-specific criminal
laws may create ethical dilemmas for nurses with
limited understanding of the nuanced ethical, legal,
and professional issues that emerge in these jurisdictions.
As the United States embarks on a new age of
health care delivery under the Affordable Care Act,
more nurses and other health care providers with
limited understanding of the medical complexities
of HIV will be called upon to provide care for
PLWH. This new challenge will be further complicated
in jurisdictions where HIV-specific criminal
laws exist. This may result in overly broad criminal
prosecutions of PLWH (Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS, 2013) because nurses
and other health care professionals are unaware of
their ethical, legal, and professional obligations in
a context of HIV.