Clinical follow-up in people living with HIV (PLWH) has individual and public health implications. The objectives of this study were to measure variables related to follow-up failures, identify self-reported reasons to maintain adequate follow-up or for having follow-up failures, and know how the pandemic influenced patients’ clinical follow-up. Participants were PLWH receiving HIV-health care at a hospital-based clinic in Mexico City which became an exclusive COVID-19 health service. Participants completed a telephone semi-structured interview and online psychological questionnaires. Lower educational and socioeconomic level, longer times of transportation to the clinic, being attended by different doctors, detectable viral load, having previous dropouts, inadequate antiretroviral adherence, and less HIV knowledge were related to follow-up failures. COVID-19 had a significant negative impact, but it also had positive repercussions for patients with adequate follow-up. These results could help develop effective psychosocial programs and improve healthcare in institutions to facilitate patient retention.

Our aim was to assess the severity of anxiety in PLWHA in Mexico City and obtain the psychometric properties of the culturally-adapted Spanish version of GAD-7. Thirteen percent of participants presented moderate to severe symptoms. Reliability (α = 0.82) and construct validity (single-factor explained 48.9% of variance) were evaluated in 411 participants. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was performed in a second sample of 527 participants. Model fit adequately (CFI = 0.991; CMIN/DF = 1.924; RMSEA = 0.042; and SRMR = 0.026). The adapted version of GAD-7 was adequate for the assessment of anxiety in Mexican PLWHA.

Introduction. Patient-physician relationship is associated with ART adherence and medical follow-up in people living with HIV (PLWH). Patient’s trust in their doctor is a key component of patient-physician relationship, so adequate and reliable instruments to measure this component are important to evaluate its impact on health outcomes. Objective. To evaluate the psychometric properties of a translated and adapted version of Trust in Physician Scale (TPS) in Mexican PLWH. Method. A cross-sectional study was carried out in PLWH. Scale was translated to Spanish and culturally adapted. Sociodemographic and TPS data were collected online due to COVID-19 pandemic. Exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analysis were carried out in two different samples. Results. Data from 215 participants was used to EFA. Five items were eliminated due to low correlation with total scale. Final Cronbach's alpha was .93. A single-factor structure explained 68.8% of the variance. CFA in a sample of 140 participants confirmed adequate fit indices (χ2[7] = 13.015 p = .072, CFI = .997, RMSEA = .057, SMRS = .0015). Discussion and conclusion. The final scale was unifactorial and it is made up of six items instead of 11. It seems to be a valid and reliable scale to measure patient’s trust in doctors in Mexican PLWH. Further studies are recommended to provide evidence of convergent validity to the instrument.