Hey guys, first of all I want to thank all of you guys for your service to the community as nurses and future nurses. I'm sure you guys are not always appreciated, and i commend you guys in being a person that cares when it is not returned.
I am currently working on my ADN and my biggest fear in nursing is catching a very serious illness or chronic disease that i cant come back from. I've read that people build strong immunity to the hospital environment, but i feel like it is trivial if you catch something that your body cannot fight. I plan in working in a hospital, and i am determine for nursing to be my job.
So i wondering what are my chances or probability of catching something my body can't really fight and any advice.
I have an IgA deficiency brought on chemo and Hodgkin's Lymphoma. More than likely I had it my entire life but it was exacerbated by what my body went through.
My point is, even I still work in a clinic environment with chronically ill patients and I'm not scared. My vaccinations are up to date and I see my PCP every three months for blood work, sometimes even every 6 months now.
Further my point - I can be quite the nervous nelly and this still does not scare me. It's as simple as having good hygiene and using PPE.
The only time I caught something from a patient was when I worked in long term care settings and the elderly have a depressed cough and you might not know if they have pneumonia in their early stages. I was feeding a resident and all of a sudden he coughed straight into my face... little did I know he had pneumonia at that time... (the patient had a very depressed cough as well) and I caught it a bit later.. Other than that if you perform proper hand hygiene and follow precautions you will be fine.
If you're in the washroom at the gas station (Mobil has really clean ones around here-- I know where every one is for 60 miles in all directions) you will wash your hands...but what if the person in there before you doesn't, and you open the door with the same handle she used? Or if the person who tried on those shoes before you has cooties? Or somebody with TB rides the bus with you?
I'll tell you what will happen. Pretty much nothing, except it's been shown that anybody who rides any sort of public transportation probably has a positive TB skin test, indicating that their bodies have made antibodies to the bacillus as soon as it entered them. Do we all have TB? Nope. I lived through the early days of the AIDS (now HIV) epidemic, and it was not pretty; there are threads here about it if you're interested. But one thing that came out of it was a booming trade in gloves and the development of standard precautions, which benefits everybody.
See, you can make yourself crazy with this. People have normal immune systems for a reason. As to pathogens, one of the first thing you will learn in your first lab at school is the concept of standard infection precautions. They will very quickly become second nature to you, and I agree with the person that says if you find this fear getting in your way to seek some quick professional help so it won't be in your way for a minute longer.
I feel safer in hospital where I have access to gloves and gowns and hand sanitizer. It's the gas pumps and shopping carts that freak me out In all seriousness, universal precautions and hand hygiene is how you protect yourself.
I have to agree with the others. You're far more likely to catch something from a public space than in a hospital.
I have been exposed to some bad stuff at work through blood exposures. However, though the monitoring is annoying it's not the end of the world. On the other hand though, I work in an environment where not all sharps can be covered with safety devices and needle sticks will happen. My advice is to report all of your blood exposures so that employee health can handle it and help care for you (document that it's a work exposure).
As for the time I was exposed to TB? We helped infection control with a list of OR staff, surgeons, anesthesia, ancillary staff in and out of the room that day (realized in the OR that isolation for TB was a good idea, so we gave them a list of everyone who'd been in or out during the case). They also trolled the chart and floor/unit staffing assignments to pull which nurses would have been exposed on the floor. They also trolled progress notes, etc, for residents, social work, etc, who might have been exposed.
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are deep-cleaned and sanitized on a daily basis. On the other hand, peoples' homes are not...
The sweet cashier at Walmart has VRE of the urine. It might even be on her hands as she gives you your receipt.
The drive-up customer who last used the ATM machine has hepatitis A and C. He touched the keypad even though he had a bowel movement within the past hour without washing his hands.
The gentleman standing in line behind you at the convenience store has active tuberculosis. He coughed several times while you stood in front of him.
My point? The same folks who are sick in the hospital are also sick in the community. However, sick community dwellers cannot be identified just by looking at them.
Maybe you are with a patient with bad diarrhea and you contract something like hep.
This would be the weirdest way to get hepatitis (it just looks weird to me because the patient mentioned in the hypothetical is only said to have bad diarrhea but somehow that leads to hepatitis). For one, you have to have vaccinations for Hep B to work in a hospital. So, I'm assuming you're thinking you're going to get Hep A? Hep A is transmitted through the fecal-oral route so you get it from getting the patient's poop in your mouth. There are very few instances, if any, in which you are guaranteed to have a patient's fecal matter anywhere near your mouth. It's completely preventable. Granted, there is a story someone shared here about a spouse that accidentally got in the "line of fire" with a C. diff patient and ended up having some serious health issues after but it's not super common.
There are so many ways to protect yourself from contracting communicable diseases. All you need is a little vigilance. It's the frequent head colds I personally have an issue with.
As someone else said, if your immunizations are up-to-date, and you wash your hands and use other PPE when necessary, you probably don't have much to worry about. I've only been working as a nurse for a little less than 4 years, but I've had numerous residents with c-diff, some who had (or had had in the past) MRSA, and who knows what else, but I didn't 'catch' anything, nor has anyone whom I worked with.
The only thing I DID get, which is way more likely, was norovirus or some other flu-like thing that was very prevalent in my facility for a little while. But it was just pretty much a couple-of-days thing.
Learn the correct sequence of donning and removing PPE and adhere to it.
Make sure your facility properly fits you for your N95 mask. Don't use ANY other size, if yours is not available, speak to the charge nurse to provide it for you or have another nurse reasigned to the pt.
If a needle stick occurs, take action immediately.
Do NOT ever walk into your house with your work shoes. Remove them before you get in the car, or in the garage. Also, remove your scrubs too in the garage if possible, if not, don't let your loved ones touch you unless you are out of the scrubs and have taken a shower. ( Ive heard of cases of MRSA being transmitted to family members, even though the healthcare worker themselves was not affected).
And again, EAT WELL , EXERCISE AND TAKE YOUR VITAMINS!
As everyone else said, the best things you can do are: use PPE and hand-washing, do your best to avoid needle-stick injuries (especially from sharps boxes because you have no idea whose needle is whose), and stay up to date on immunizations.
One other thing I'll add... if you are really concerned, work in a setting where it is often known what a patient has - as in they are already diagnosed. Working in the ED, for example, is higher risk because people frequently come in with undiagnosed infectious diseases. Some of these diseases are resistant to universal precautions. My friend works in an ED and was once exposed to TB while in triage. She wasn't wearing an N95 mask of course, because the patient had what seemed like just a mild cough at the time. The cough was not even his chief complaint... he was there for drug withdrawal.
Anyway, that ED story isn't to scare you. My friend was completely fine. But just keep in mind that there is a huge range of environments with regards to risk (i.e. outpatient specialty office versus emergency department). You can't necessarily pick your rotations, but you certainly have a say in the type of setting you work in once you graduate.
When I graduated, I went straight into general Peds. My first 6 months I was sick constantly with one thing or another. When I hit the 6 month mark, it was as though a switch got flipped that made my immune system realize it could handle whatever was thrown at it by the little rugrats. I've never caught anything from a patient since then. That was in 1978 so quite a long time to go without catching something from a patient.
In all seriousness, universal precautions and hand hygiene is how you protect yourself.
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DowntheRiver
983 Posts
I have an IgA deficiency brought on chemo and Hodgkin's Lymphoma. More than likely I had it my entire life but it was exacerbated by what my body went through.
My point is, even I still work in a clinic environment with chronically ill patients and I'm not scared. My vaccinations are up to date and I see my PCP every three months for blood work, sometimes even every 6 months now.
Further my point - I can be quite the nervous nelly and this still does not scare me. It's as simple as having good hygiene and using PPE.