They had some sort of disease/illness you could have transmitted from them but nobody realized they had the condition until later on?
I had a patient from prison this last week and I took care of him for a total of 6 nights (12 hour shifts) to find out on my last night that the day nurse looked at the results of his sputum culture and saw he has respiratory MRSA. He had really been coughing pretty badly for the past few nights which makes me paranoid about the whole situation. Myself and the CNAs who had been caring for him are frustrated about it and wish we would have known sooner, especially since many of us have small children at home.
The sputum culture was taken from the day of 5/17 and no one realized he had respiratory MRSA until the morning of 5/20 and at that point he was placed in airborne isolation. I know it can take a couple days for cultures to come back, but I'm guessing the results were back for atleast a day without anyone checking the microbiology report to see what type of culture was growing. Could this place the nurses that were caring for him who should have checked the report (and subsequently initiated isolation precautions) under any liability if someone were to be infected with respiratory MRSA and push the case?
