Dr. Keith Churchwell was enjoying Christmas Day 1991 at home with his wife when their phone rang. He was needed at the hospital. As the chief resident for Grady Memorial Hospital, one of four hospitals in the Emory University system in Atlanta, Churchwell oversaw about 160 early-career doctors, including the caller — an anesthesiology intern who’d made a mistake. The intern (or, first-year resident) had stuck himself with a needle contaminated with the blood of an HIV-positive patient. At that time, most people who became HIV-positive developed life-threatening infections and cancers. Churchwell was 30, a few years ahead of the…
