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Keith Henry, MD; Scott Campbell, RN, MSPH
St Paul-Ramsey Medical Center St Paul, Minn

JAMA. 1991;265(13):1685.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The recent article by Lewis and Montgomery¹ on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing policies of US hospitals was a valuable contribution to information on that topic. Since policy decisions about hospital-based HIV testing will likely be influenced by their study, we raise several questions. First, who exactly is the chief hospital administrator (eg, the president, chief executive officer, chief of staff)? Second, does that person actually know what the hospital's HIV testing policy is? In our studies of knowledge and attitudes related to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), hospital administrative staff were found to have higher levels of knowledge and positive attitudes than nurses but lower levels than physicians.^2,3 We believe that a survey of hospital-based infection-control practitioners would provide a more accurate assessment of a hospital's HIV testing policies.

In addition, there is a significant gap between policy recommendations and actual practices that has . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Drummond Rennie, MD, Deputy Editor (West), and Don Riesenberg, MD, Senior Editor.

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