Needle stick Protocols

[nanaynurse]

Hello fellow nurses. Advice please

so I have been working full time in a small community hospital and per diem in a hospice. Today I was on call in the hospice, got called to check a patient that was lethargic and was advised beforehand to check patient’s blood sugar. Went to see patient, patient not responsive to verbal stimuli but responds to painful stimuli. I asked the primary caregiver where patient’s glucometer is, then I asked for a sharps container, pcg didn’t know where it was because patient checks her own sugar. Sugar was good, vital signs within normal limits, I just gave patient medication then when I was packing up, I got poked by the lancet. I immediately washed my finger and reported the incident. It seems that this hospice has no protocol in place. Got back in forth in calls with supervisors, DON, owner, nothing. Went to urgent care but they didn’t want to entertain me coz it’s workers comp. after 8 hours, I finally got a go signal to go to another urgent care. While there, I received a call from the owner who handed the phone to the medical director who explained to me that I should just go back to the urgent care tomorrow because my case is not an emergency because: lancets are not deep enough to poke you that would allow a virus to spread; patient is not getting hiv meds so pt does not have hiv; and patient is about 80+ years old and if pt has hiv, pt should’ve died already. I feel so frustrated because I feel something is wrong here. Any advice?

[JKL33]

I would contact your local health department/unit/division of public health and report this exposure and let them know you need appropriate eval/follow-up. If they refer you to your company's occ med process, tell them your company doesn't have one and has been unhelpful. You can also tell them you have been informed by your company that the patient can't have any communicable diseases or else she already would've died.

I wouldn't even bother talking about it any more with your employer; they cannot be trusted to do the right thing. I'm pretty sure local public health will be "interested" in this.

You probably already know that we cannot discuss or offer advice on your risk or anything like that here.

Take care of yourself!

[nanaynurse]

thank you! im planning on giving them a call today to get advice.