Re.] Who is an Experienced HIV Care Provider?

[Guest guest]

It is that Geoffrey from Australia again just a little over half way round

the country (9 states out of 11 this trip).

I have been practicing in counselling care support and treatment advocacy

together with some specialised peer education and positive speaker training

over a period of 12 years.

I have provided terminal care in a home setting as part of a team and have

participated in assisting families in anticipatory grief before their loved

ones actually die and facilitated terminal patients to make some preparatory

decisions as to how they want their funerals held and what memorials might

look like.

I am not making this offering as a brag list but simply to contrast this

range of experience and competencies with those that are offered in the

formal Bachelor, Post Graduate, and Masters degrees which are often the

minimum standards for consideration when organisational appointments are

being considered.

In addition to the formal recognised qualifications for medical

practitioners which go without saying, and the capacity and clinical

experience expected from primary health care services, I consider that the

same rigourous but non necessarily academic dependent specifications be

applied to the criteria for appointment to advertised organisational

positions as well.

So often I have read job descriptions that I believe I could fill from the

experience but after reading the long list of minimum standards I would not

even consider applying, mostly due to the fact that to get the experience I

sacrificed the formal academic study time and lack the formal credentials.

History has shown of course that the first course that the successful

applicants embark on is to engage experienced people to actually make the

wheels of the organisation turn or alternatively start them turning in an

academically sound direction that is counter productive to the needs of

service users, not deliberately of course, but mostly out of ignorance and

the lack of practical modules in the formal training.

I guess that this also has a bearing on accreditation as well.

I am also being increasingly concerned as to what constitutes a " key

stakeholder " because there is a blur in my vision particularly in India as

to whether those who are " key stakeholders " are being raised from the ranks

of those whose stakes are being held or whether there is another career path

process in place. No where is this more apparent than when one looks at the

" key stakeholders " who prognosticate on harm reduction in injecting drug use

who are so far removed from the actual behaviour as to potentially skew the

priorities.

I therefore seek to flag that when international forums are convened and

invitation lists are forwarded that the " key stakeholders " be identified so

that the list can be vetted by those whose lives are likely to be most

affected. Often of course they are cost prohibitive for those most qualified

as well.

I guess this goes beyond the brief of the Indian Medical Association but in

relation to the readers of this list it can become a matter of life and

death.

Geoff Heaviside

Brimbank Community Initiatives Inc

Sponsoring Sunshine Budget Advisory Service

5 Brisbane Street

P.O. Box 606 Sunshine 3020

. Australia.

Ph: 0418 328 278

Ph/Fax : (03) 9311 5052

or in India

Mr Geoff Heaviside

Flat #10 Kash Towers

93 South West Boag Road

T.Nagar, Chennai

INDIA 600017

Ph: (91 44) 4329580

Mobile : (91) 9840 097 178

E-mail: <gheaviside@...>

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