Nurses afraid to care for AIDS patients.

:chuckle

[DIPLOMATICRN4HIRE, MSN, RN]

So far I have read a few threads that you have started and all basically in a complaint form.... Nurses and not saying all each will have a fear of some sort of caring for a patient . In time they will overcome each fear. But each patient reguarless of circumstances or disease process should be taken care of with universal precautions. I personally am not scared of taking care of an aids patient I do however watch myself if I have a cold or the sniffles when I enter a patients room that has a compromised immune system. I use reverse Isolation as to protect them from what I might have. But other than that I treat each patient the same. All with dignity and compassion.

Zoe

[Vsummer1]

Standard precautions work both ways and is the first thing taught to students. So in my eyes, EVERY patient I take care of has AIDS or some other life threatening communicable disease.

I believe someone else on this board once summed it up like this: if its wet and it ain't yours....

and Chap, I am with Zoe on this -- your posts are getting redundant with the complaint about the nurse theme. Perhaps your view of nurses is limited to LTC (and perhaps that is just one LTC?) and does not apply to most nurses I have come in contact with. Perhaps you can narrow your complaints to your own narrow world?

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

In the last ten years I've never come across anyone afraid of persons with AIDS, or treating them any different from any other patient.

Universal precautions. Duh...

[RNpupil]

Once I worked went on vacation for two weeks and before that I was floated to the ER. I met a patient who was full-blown AIDS. When I came back from my vacation I was floated to the Med-surge unit. The nurse asked me to help her with cleaning her patient before I left to go home. Right before I went home, the charge nurse, told me to make sure that that patient was cleaned before I left. I went into the room and there was that same AIDS patient I met in the ER. The assigned nurse was nowhere to be found. And he was so heavy and he was skin and bone and he had a massive code brown. The charge nurse knew that I would've needed assistance just like the nurse assigned need my assistance and told me to clean the patient. I reported it to the Compliance Officer and they didn't do squat. The next time I was floated to that floar I was assured by the smirks and facial expressions that whatever I spoke about to the Compliance Officer, the charge nurse and that assigned nurse knew.

I am not hercules. I have to admit that some nurses do ask for help, and then do not pitch in.

[RNpupil]

I have never thought that in nursing that I would see such a thing

[DIPLOMATICRN4HIRE, MSN, RN]

So when you were exposed to TB what care and other things did the facilty do to take care of the problem, of the exposure? What treatments did they do for you?

Zoe

[RNpupil]

Using Universal Precautions apparantly isn't reliable to some nurses

[DIPLOMATICRN4HIRE, MSN, RN]

Hmmmm.... interesting.

Zoe

[renerian, BSN, RN]

You must work someone different than I have. I have not seen this.

renerian

[sunnygirl272]

Originally posted by ITSJUSTMEZOE

Hmmmm.... interesting.

Zoe

ditto.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

So, you are saying the facility you work for just let you go with a positive PPD, didn't treat, didn't do CXR every year, etc? Hmmm...interesting, very interesting.