I saw a huge cockroach at my patient's house

[50kn]

i was assigned this private duty case (night shift) ---the patient is a 5 months baby. my company said that the case is lvn case and pays only at lvn rate. i am an rn but other patient's houses are far from my house, i just vaguely accepted the case.

at the house yesterday, while family members were sleeping, i was with this baby, and saw a huge cockroach. i have seen cockroaches only a few times in my life, but this one was so big and had light brown color. i was so terrified. i saw cockroaches twice throughout the night though i don't know if they were the same one or different roaches.

anyway, i am scared of cockroaches. according to my company, i was supposed to work with this patient 5 days a week but after i saw the cockroaches, i decided to call my company tomorrow and tell them i would not be able to work 5 days a week, probably i would be able to work only two days a week. (i actually don't' want go back to this house but until i found the next job, i should work at least a little).

is there somebody who refused the case because of horrible environment (such as cockroach, spiders and ants...)?

[caliotter3]

I haven't left a case due to vermin or heavy degrees of lack of house hygiene. I've left more often due to issues of personal safety or the clients just taking too much advantage of me.

[merlee]

Tell your supervisor what you saw. Don't just leave. Make sure the child is safe. Get over it. If there is one large roach, there are dozens others.

You don't say where you are, but someone may need to call the health department. Leave that to someone at your agency.

Take some bug spray with you, but do not spray anywhere near the baby or the baby's furniture.

[iluvivt, BSN, RN]

They need to have some professionally removed with an exterminator. My company actually paid for one of our pts hotel room while her apt complex had the exterminator get rid of the cockroaches. Is this a single family home or an apt complex b/c its much more difficult to get rid of them in building with multiple units. They tend to come out at night and I think they are very creepy and jumpy and make me sick too. They will not hesitate to get on you either or crawl right across a bed or furniture. I would let my agency know and they can assist with an exterminator as part of social services. Your assessment shows an unhealthy environment with infestation and it needs to be addressed.

[nursel56]

I can't stand cockroaches. I did have a family with a horrible ant problem, which I had no difficulty working around.

Then, I had a patient who had cockroaches living either in or under his vent!!! :barf02:I understand they gravitate toward things like phones, radios and microwave ovens because the electricity generates heat. Yes, the RT was aware of the situation, which finally got resolved because she was even more skeeved out than I was.

If you aren't able to get a bug specialist in to get rid of them, remember they hate light, but are specialists at hitching a ride to your house in your stuff. I would bring the absolute bare minimum of stuff in the house with you, and keep it in sealable containers. I'm so paranoid about them, I would change clothes outside my house, too.

If it were me it wouldn't make much difference whether I was grossed out 2 nights a week vs 5 nights a week if I really needed the money, though. Best wishes!

[SDALPN]

Roaches are very common in PDN. Most agencies won't do anything about it to avoid upsetting the family. I hate roaches and worry about the health of my patients when they are present. The fact that the agency will only pay you an LPN rate and knows the environment they sent you in tells me the agency isn't very concerned. Plus 5 days open is rare unless its a bad case that nobody wants to go to.

[50kn]

i think so too, probably nobody wants to go to the house. as i saw the medical record when i went to the house last time, previously several lvn had worked with the patient, but after 2- 4 days every lvn stopped visiting the house. last week nobody worked there except me working on saturday. i don’t know the real reason why lvns who have been sent to the house keep quitting, but the lvns might have seen cockroaches, then they quit. and opening is not only 5 days; actually the scheduler says that there are 7days opening at the house. anyway, i can work there only 1-2 nights, but i cannot deal with cockroaches any more than that.

[tothepointeLVN, LVN]

You've have freaked out at the place I was doing a hospice shift at. There were cockroaches (tiny ones though) everywhere. And a secret hole in the bathroom floor covered by a carpet so you couldn't see it as you fell in.

[LPN4life2004]

I had a place that I went to with bed bugs. In my area, they weren't a problem and my bite reaction didn't show up for about 4 days after. I only went there 1 time a week, and when I finally figured out what it was from (at first I thought it was hives until I noticed the pattern) I called my office and they didn't believe me. I told them I wasn't going to be able to go back as I couldn't risk an infestation in my house. Thankfully I didn't get one from being there before I realized what was going on. I also saw a mouse a few times an promptly reported that too. Thankfully I don't scare easily or the family would have woke up to screaming!

[KATRN78]

I saw a roach in a clean looking house of a rich family's home. I was not expecting that.

I once went to a home that was so filthy, feces on toilet seat, trash on floor, animal feces on floor, stench of cat box in the air, a swarm of fruit flies buzzing in the kitchen, an old fashion sticky fly trap hanging over the sink, covered in old dried dead flies, just totally filthy. I did not stay for orientation.

I reported it all to my office.

The baby had a central line, colostomy, feeding tube... etc. he died 9 mos later. Another nurse told me that he kept getting septic.

[MrChicagoRN, RN]

You go into people's homes, you're gonna see vermin.

I've seen cockroaches drop from the ceiling, or scurry about in droves. I limited what I brought in the home, and bought one woman some roach traps. I only had to be there an hour...she had to live there!

[nekozuki, LPN]

Down here in Florida, roaches are pretty common. It's not always a matter of cleanliness; our houses are cozy and secure, who wouldn't want to crawl in and live it up?

I had one case with german cockroaches in the kitchen. However, the family lived in an apartment, and although they kept the place spotless, they couldn't control what neighbors did. The exterminator would spray one apartment, they'd scurry to the next, and so on and so forth. Also, these kinds of roaches were notoriously resistant to pesticides. They weren't in the patient's room, and all his supplies were kept safely sealed in tupperware, so it wasn't an issue.

Ugh, I did have another house that was overcrowded, disgusting and the OUTSIDE PORCH had been hastily constructed into a separate bedroom. The place reeked of body odor and wet dog, and there were roaches all over the kitchen, which was connected to the kid's room. The mom repeatedly would yell from other parts of the house, "These nurses will report me and my baby will be taken away." Mind you, she had 24-hour nursing and never really came in to interact with her son...

Oh man, the things no one tells you about in nursing school.