AIDS: Nurses in AIDS care need to support patients and promote patient autonomy throughout the continuum of HIV/AIDS. Nurses are essential for assisting patients and family members in making difficult treatment decisions, including choices regarding death. Discussions of end of life issues should be postponed until the patient demonstrates active signs and symptoms of approaching death. These discussions require expert knowledge of subtle cues and knowledge of advancing disease, as well as options for improved symptom management without focusing on curative aspects of care. Through these discussions, the nurse empowers the family in decision making while realizing patients and loved ones are still faced with existential or spiritual crises, psychological pain, and grief associated with terminal illness. Towards the end of life, nursing contacts should increase and be armed with an understanding of palliative care planning with patients with advanced HIV disease.