Nursing facilities infested with bugs

Nurses General Nursing

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Specializes in retired from healthcare.

Did you ever work in a building infested with cockroaches and see them get into the residents beds? I just found this page and it brought back memories of when I used to work in a place with bugs. I couldn't take it and I had to quit.

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Specializes in retired LTC.

In all the facilities I've worked, even the best of facilities, there freq are cockroaches! They have an excellent food source, even with the best of housekeeping practices.

Industrial kitchens with their vendor deliveries, pts, families and even staff bring in fomites (I used that word!). How else can you explain scabies in a chronic, long term pt who had NOT been hospitalized in a looonnngg time? Lice? One time I opened up my morning newspaper and a cockroach was right in the middle! I figured it was in the delivery truck.

Big tree ants, spiders, flies, MICE and other critters all are visitors. And I think the Southern and Western states have their own special ones. That's why every unit I've ever been on has "the bug book" for the exterminator.

Fortunately I don't get creeped out by bugs - I don't like them, but I don't go crazy, except for the occasional cricket that gets inside.

Bugs are just part of the institutional setting.

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They may be there, but the facility needs to make sure pests do not take over. You shouldn't be seeing them everyday, all day long. Sure you'll have a quick infestation of ants, but they need to get an exterminator to help get this in check.

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I worked in an ICU over a loading dock once and after torrential rains we got invaded by ants flooded out down below. We ended up putting the legs of the beds in basins of water when we found ants crawling on the patients. (eeeeewww) But we still had to look out for scouts coming down from the ceiling to the ceiling-mounted IV poles to the tubing.

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Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

I've smushed a silverfish or two, but I don't see cockroaches ever. *shudder* I've heard rumors of bedbugs at other hospitals though! :eek:

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I worked in an ICU over a loading dock once and after torrential rains we got invaded by ants flooded out down below. We ended up putting the legs of the beds in basins of water when we found ants crawling on the patients. (eeeeewww) But we still had to look out for scouts coming down from the ceiling to the ceiling-mounted IV poles to the tubing.

EWWWWW Ants. I hate hate hate ants. Today I heard someone say they saw silverfish on the 3rd floor. One resident has bites all over her arm, had to have one area lanced, and actually had a biopsy on one part of her arm. I'm new, don't know the whole story, but it was confirmed to me by the other nurses that the resident was not exaggerating, that it indeed was from bugs.

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Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

I recently found out head lice were going around in our area. Gives me the itchies just THINKING about it!

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During clinical at a nursing home, we'd see roaches fairly often. And this is in Tampa FL, roaches are HUGE. The place was disgusting anyway, never enough diapers or hygiene items, and cleaning staff had to buy their own supplies. Hasn't been a problem anywhere else I've been tho.

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Specializes in Cardio-Pulmonary; Med-Surg; Private Duty.

Sometimes I think that Florida's bugs provided the inspiration for the "Men In Black" movie franchise -- the bugs in that state are GINORMOUS!

Makes me glad I live in Michigan -- I'd rather have months and months of ice and snow over nasty huge bugs year-round!

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