Legal to force vaccines and TB test??

Nursing Students General Students

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I was just reading on another thread, regarding entrance vaccines, that it was NOT mandatory to have the TB test or Vaccines that "require" by Nursing Programs? I live in California and am wondering if that is true here? Does anybody know if legally you are required to have them? Can they deny you starting the program should you decline?:confused:

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

Unfortunately, the TB skin testing is required by just about every facility you will practice in. I doubt that it is the school requiring it. It's more like the hospitals and nursing homes where you will do you clinicals mandating it or their insurance providers demanding it or they won't let the student nurses touch the patients. This TB business goes back to when TB ran rampant and there was no cure. Well, there is a resistant strain of it out there that doesn't respond to the medications thanks to the drug addicts and boozers who didn't take their TB medications like they were supposed to. The public health officials don't want this thing to spread and early identification and treatment is always better than finding out later that someone has something nasty and then trying to cure it. The alternative to TB skin testing is a yearly CXR and that involves radiation.

Specializes in CDI Supervisor; Formerly NICU.

The safety of society in general and your patients in particular trumps your desire to remain additive free...if you want to work as a nurse.

Life is full of choices.

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