Meeting the challenge of mandatory AIDS education for health care workers

AIDS is the number one health problem in our country today. To date, education is the only vaccine. In March 1988, the Washington State Legislature passed into law the Omnibus AIDS Bill, viewed nationwide as model AIDS legislation. This law mandated AIDS education in 1989 for approximately 110,000 Washington state licensed health care workers. In this article we describe the implementation of this requirement for 800 affected employees in a Seattle area community hospital. We describe audience response to the education requirement as well as to the AIDS education program developed at our hospital. Based on this experience, we have recommendations for other state legislative bodies considering similar legislation as well as for educators and other professionals who may be involved in the implementation of similar legislation.