title: Challenges and opportunities for patients with HIV who educate health professionals.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Patient perspectives are valuable for clinical care and teaching.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To understand personal and programmatic effects of using HIV-infected persons as teachers in courses about care of HIV-infected people.
  
  
  METHODS
  Semistructured interviews with HIV-infected faculty for New England AIDS Education and Training Center (NEAETC), addressing teaching decision and its personal, medical, and psychological consequences. Interview transcripts were analyzed via iterative, consensus building.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Participants reported consequences of teaching that benefited them as patients (finding health care providers, increasing their knowledge base, and receiving tangible rewards such as gifts). A deeper level of benefit was realized personally, increasing control over their life and disease. Relationships, personal and professional, changed, from unilateral to mutual, heightening a sense of their own empowerment. Teaching built support networks and aided in coping with difficult issues raised (negative emotions, informing significant others about their infection, death and dying). Program support was essential for participation, allowing numerous teachers to transform teaching from individual messages to universal lessons.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The program was well received and well regarded by participating teachers. Convenience sampling does not account for nonparticipating faculty viewpoints or those who left the program, but concrete benefits can be expected if support and investment by the program is in place. Learning by these HIV-infected teachers fits the characteristics of transformational learning.
authors.affiliation: Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, and Geriatrics, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. hatemd@ummhc.org
authors.forename: David S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Hatem
authors.forename: Donna
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gallagher
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frankel
mesh_terms: D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D006679:HIV Seropositivity; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*