Negotiating "Home" and "Care" among the HIV+ Homeless: An Ethnographic Case Study of Home Care Nursing Habitus

Abstract

The authors combine field work among home care nurses working in an impoverished urban neighbourhood with analysis of changing models of service provision. They explore the concepts of "home" and "care" for the homeless and marginally housed as features of a home care nursing "habitus" in the face of conflicting professional and institutional approaches to HIV care. While the nurses' innovative practice is a result of the failure of existing models to meet the needs of multi-diagnosis patients, it is also influenced by the drive to increase adherence to antiretroviral regimens as a means of slowing the spread of HIV at the population level. The authors describe the nurses' negotiated practice and use Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus to theorize about their ability to meet competing demands.