Infectious Diseases trainees, don’t fall under the HIV spell
1)
We often leave HIV-related opportunistic illnesses to be studied within the “HIV study”. However, this makes the HIV topic enormous, and we will tend to study those diseases superficially because we want to finish the HIV chapter once and for all. Moreover, we may be creating a rigid association between those diseases and HIV infection and compromising our ability to diagnose and manage them in other contexts.
Don’t study (for instance) cryptococcosis as a potential complication of HIV infection. Study cryptococcosis as the disease it actually is.
2)
Management of HIV infection and management of HIV-associated infectious diseases are key areas that distinguish the infectious diseases physician. But don’t forget that your expertise is needed for infectious diseases and for the full scope of infectious diseases: prevention, diagnosis, therapy.
Don’t be a trainee who merely knows more about therapeutic options for HIV and for some not-so-frequent infections than the colleagues of other specialties.
Be an Infectious Diseases trainee.
HIV: human immunodeficiency virus
Infekta