Just Being There: Shanti’s SF General AIDS Ward Counselors, 1983-1995

For Nursing Clio I center on what was left out of the critically acclaimed documentary Ward 5B:

When Ward 5B premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the nurses of the first AIDS inpatient unit in the United States walked down the red carpet with movie stars Julianne Moore and Halle Berry. Garnering critical and popular praise as well as Oscar buzz, Ward 5B explores the famed AIDS unit from the time it opened at San Francisco General Hospital in 1983, its expansion to the larger Ward 5A in 1986, and its closure in 2006. Codirectors Dan Krause and Paul Haggis drew upon the voices of the nurses, family members, patients, community figures, hospital volunteers, and long-term HIV survivors and integrated archival footage of life on the ward to center the men and women who cultivated this space and place of holistic care and healing. Despite the many voices in this documentary, the directors excluded a powerful supporter of all those on Wards 5B/5A: Shanti Project.

A community based organization that provided free counseling support services to people living with chronic or terminal illnesses and their loved ones, Shanti provided its services on the AIDS ward via staff counselors between 1983 to 1995. Known as the Shanti Hospital counselor program, Shanti counselors helped people with AIDS (PWAs) and their loved ones process the tumultuous nature of the AIDS epidemic through bedside visits, support groups, and help with discharge planning. It was the first time an outside community organization was formally hired on staff at SF General and also retained its own work identity and intimate style of nonmedical care in a medical environment.