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Discussion

please help

Hi, i have posted this in the geriatrics forum too, i hope thats ok. I work as a cna in an assisted living home of 9. Last week i put my hand in the box to get a lancet and there was one in there with the cap off and i stuck myself, i went to my doc and she didnt want to test me yet and told me to wait 3 months then be tested. I am freaking out , and the owner of the assisted living home has tried to reasure me that everyone there in free of infectious diseases as she says, should i be so worried?

thanks alot

Featured Replies

was it a box of unused lancets? I mean do you think someone used it and then put it back in the box? If you can be fairly certain that it was a new lancet No worry at all. If the 9 residents are truly healthy and without infectious diseas i would also say you have little to fear. Are these older residents, I mean like people that were not actually involved in the times of permiscuous sex and drug use? You probably have nothing to worry about. But you can never be too safe I would 2 weeks then get checked I have never heard of 3 month waiting period.

  • Author

thanks for the reply, these residents are all over 80 and the box was new but i dont know if maybe someone accidently put an old one in there, my boss has told me they are all ok, but i havent worked there that long so i dont know. But all the other employees tell me they are fine too. I still wanna get checked because i obsess about everything, lol.

  • Experts

If you pulled it out of a clean lancet box, in theory it ought to be clean.

I do disagree with the manager's mentality that "everyone here is clean because they're old (or well-off, or whatever her reasoning is.)" Elderly people have had more surgeries than younger people just because they've been around longer, and while the blood supply is safer now than ever before, they would have had surgeries in times when the blood supply was less thoroughly screened. I say this not to scare you, but to make remind you (AND your manager) that universal precautions are called that because they are to be applied to EVERYONE. You can't tell someone is a carrier of something just by looking at them.

You should ascertain if your workplace actually has a needle stick policy, and if so, what it is. If you are truly concerned that a dirty needle was in the clean needle box, there are a number of problems, but you should get baseline testing and retesting later - generally hepatitis B and C and HIV are the main things screened for. Are there a limited number of people who would likely be source patients if it was a dirty lancet (for instance, if you only had one diabetic patient who was getting finger sticks, that would probably narrow it down, altho you couldn't be sure - employees sometimes play with the blood sugar machines.)

All that said, again, it's unlikely that there was a dirty needle in the clean needle box, but this is a great opportunity for your workplace to see what procedures it has in place for this unfortunate type of incident. Try and not freak out.

thanks for the reply, these residents are all over 80 and the box was new but i dont know if maybe someone accidently put an old one in there, my boss has told me they are all ok, but i havent worked there that long so i dont know. But all the other employees tell me they are fine too. I still wanna get checked because i obsess about everything, lol.

Just checking if the box was brand new there should have a tape or some closure that had to be broken to open for use have you forgotten this or was it not a brand new box?

  • Author

this is the box that we get our lancets out of daily, there are only 3 diabetics here, and i have reviewed their charts and everyone else and they list their diagnosis, and they all have pretty much the same thing and i have seen no hcv,hbv,or hiv, and i know that doesnt necesarily mean that they dont have it but i would think chances are that, that would be in their charts? And the lancet box was opened and like i said its the box that we get them out of every morning, thanks alot..

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