Does your healthcare facility hire employees with HIV or hepatitis

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Does your healthcare facility hire employees with HIV or hepatitis? Or is it a don't ask don't tell policy thing?:D

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Under our laws (Canada) it's illegal to ask. However, Occupational Health will usually get the answer out of you.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

I don't think you can ask that in the US either, unless you're a sexual partner of someone who's been recently diagnosed.

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If I have one of these i will have ethical delimma about self disclosing it. But in the meantime I will be sad leaving my job behind after all the hard work. I was thinking as a health care worker, especially a nurse, we take universal health precatuonary measures every moment, so why should it matter for our employer whether we have these sexual or blood contact diseases. Maybe to protect the patients, they would say I am guessing.

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Specializes in Med Surg, Peds, OB, L/D, Ortho.
Does your healthcare facility hire employees with HIV or hepatitis? Or is it a don't ask don't tell policy thing?:D

They can't really keep you from working.....Thank God cuz I am but 1 infected nurse. There are more of us out there unfortunately. My employer knows as do all the folks I work with. I am a strong advocate of precautions.....just wish we knew about it when I started nursing back in the day when you were taught that you would offend patients if you wore gloves in any duty other than a sterile proceedure! So that said...wear your PPE!

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Specializes in MSP, Informatics.

I can't even imagine where that question would come up in the interview.

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Um, right before the lawsuit, maybe?

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Specializes in Orientation hahahaha.

We do at our hospital. She spoke openly about a heb B exposure from working in dialysis, it got real quit real fast in the room. I later told here that I appreciated her honesty and it actually was very sobering to hear her testimony...

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Specializes in ED, LTC, ICU.

At my job, they tested me for HIV, Hepatitis, urine toxicology and other things...so i dont think it is "Dont ask, don't tell" there.

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Specializes in M/S, MICU, CVICU, SICU, ER, Trauma, NICU.

Since our facility doesn't ask, I am sure that they do hire people with those situations.

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They can't really keep you from working.....Thank God cuz I am but 1 infected nurse. There are more of us out there unfortunately. My employer knows as do all the folks I work with. I am a strong advocate of precautions.....just wish we knew about it when I started nursing back in the day when you were taught that you would offend patients if you wore gloves in any duty other than a sterile proceedure! So that said...wear your PPE!

and in OB, for years we used DeLee suction catheters on babies..the nurse was the suction, there was a trap that was supposed to catch fluid/mucus...only problem, trap didn't always work, and the nurse got a mouthful:no:

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Specializes in ..

It would be illegal to not hire someone based on this diagnosis. It's discrimination, blatantly.

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