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A powerful oral history of the nurses whose dedication and compassion transformed HIV care in the UK.
With the sudden arrival of AIDS in the UK, healthcare workers confronted a new, deadly and highly stigmatised disease. They had little prior knowledge but deep moral resolve. This book tells their story in their words.
The early response to AIDS was shaped by media fearmongering, conservative moralism and homophobia. Against this, nurses and midwives fought for the dignity, rights and autonomy of their patients, mostly young gay men and drug users marginalised by society and facing profound discrimination. Working alongside activists and patients, they tore down the old traditions of nursing and did things differently.
Featuring the real voices of twenty-seven nurses, He died in my arms takes the reader inside the wards and hospices of the 1980s and 1990s, revealing the extraordinary truth of nursing in the AIDS era. It was an experience that profoundly changed the nurses who went through it. It would change nursing forever.
Jane Bruton was ward sister of the first purpose-built AIDS ward in the UK and has played an influential role in HIV nursing over the last four decades. She worked in Uganda and St Helena and taught nurses in Eastern Europe. Since retirement she continues to be involved in promoting awareness of HIV in nursing.
Sian Edwards has worked as a nurse in HIV care for over thirty years. Her experience includes both HIV clinical nursing and educational roles in the UK, Australia and Zambia. She is currently the manager of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Health Program in Melbourne, Australia.
Martin Jones worked as a nurse in HIV care from 1986 to 2025, in Cambridge and East Sussex. He has also worked in South Africa. He has written and blogged for Nursing Times and has several publications in peer-reviewed journals. He retired from HIV nursing in 2025.
Introduction
1 ‘Managed hysteria’: HIV nursing in the years before effective treatment
2 ‘Layers of injustice’: HIV nursing in the face of stigma
3 ‘It was revolutionary’: how HIV changed nursing and midwifery
4 ‘He died in my arms’: a new approach to death and dying
5 ‘Could be your brother, could be your friend’: the impact on HIV nurses and midwives
6 ‘They don't teach that in nursing school’: supporting and educating HIV nurses and midwives
Afterword
Index