Illness?

Guttercat, ASN, RN · Mar 14, 2012

I am not a nurse yet, but I was curious on how often you get sick from being around sick people? When you first started out, did you get sick a lot? Does your immune system just build up?

1.) often

2.) yes

3.) yes

DemonWings · Mar 14, 2012

I think I pick up more bugs from my kids then I do from my patients. Probably because I dont sanitize after every contact with the kids, if I did they would call me a psycho.

Despareux · Mar 15, 2012

I don't have a job yet. But during my 18 month nursing school experience, I have never been sick. In my whole 39 years, I have only been sick with pneumonia once and the flu once, and then I had a case of food-borne illness; I don't count minor colds as an illness because they never affect me enough to notice. But I do think I make my family ill, because they ALWAYS seem to have something going on while I'm in school.

MJB2010 · Mar 15, 2012

My first year of nursing school I caught EVERYTHING! It was a case of one of us would get something then we all caught it. A lot of it had to do with the staying up all night studying, working full time, and all the stress that killed our immune systems. I get a flu shot every year and I had the flu twice that year. I also got walking penumonia. I assure you, I am an ocd hand washer, I really think it was just the stress and lack of sleep along with being exposed to a lot more germs.

Through my career I have done ok, very rarely do I get sick. Actually thinking about it now, I have never called in sick as an RN and I have been one for 2 years now. I am however, pretty sick right now. I just changed to the night shift and again, I think it is the lack of sleep messing with my immune system. When I sleep and eat healthy, I tend to have the immune system of an ox. When I am exhausted and not sleeping well, I get sick like clockwork. I am just hoping to kick this by tomorrow night, because I am working. I am going to sleep all day tomorrow which usually helps me fight off anything.