Surgeons' and occupational health departments' awareness of guidelines on post›exposure prophylaxis for staff exposed to HIV: telephone survey

Surgeons face the occupational risk of parenteral transmission of infection, in particular with HIV, percutaneous exposure to which carries an estimated risk of transmission of 0.3%.1–3 This risk may be reduced by antiretroviral prophylactic treatment.4 The UK Department of Health issued guidelines on post-exposure prophylaxis in June 1997.5 We assessed whether the guidelines had been implemented and whether surgeons were aware of them in the South and West health region. We conducted a telephone survey of all the occupational health departments and on-duty general surgical and orthopaedic registrar grade surgical trainees in the South and West region. Separate sets of questions were used for occupational health departments and surgical trainees (box). #### Survey questions ##### To both groups