I'm a newer nurse, I work in a skilled facility. In this facility it's my job to flush all iv's whether they are PICC's, midlines, etc., upon starting to flush a patients iv I noticed that firstly it was a new type of iv lock that I have never seen before, I later found that is is called a y-type. Long story short, I moved the iv lock to gain better access to the port and something splashed my face, it landed in 5-6 spots on my face( 1 on my lip) I finished what I was doing and exiting the room(planing to go wash my lip) I was then stopped and inform that this patient was a known drug abuser and definitely has hep c and probably HIV. When I then had to flush this patients iv again to hook up the antibiotic I noticed that the y-type iv must have cracked from the clamp because when pushing saline a drop comes from the tubing. I notified our iv team and followed our procedure for possible exposure. Although my DON dosent believe that this was a posive exposure, I don't honestly trust her opinion because she didnt know ampicillin was in the pcn family.Note: there wasn't blood in the tubing when I got exposed. Should I be worried, do I need to follow up with a series of blood tests? Opinions are appreciated.
I'm a newer nurse, I work in a skilled facility. In this facility it's my job to flush all iv's whether they are PICC's, midlines, etc., upon starting to flush a patients iv I noticed that firstly it was a new type of iv lock that I have never seen before, I later found that is is called a y-type. Long story short, I moved the iv lock to gain better access to the port and something splashed my face, it landed in 5-6 spots on my face( 1 on my lip) I finished what I was doing and exiting the room(planing to go wash my lip) I was then stopped and inform that this patient was a known drug abuser and definitely has hep c and probably HIV. When I then had to flush this patients iv again to hook up the antibiotic I noticed that the y-type iv must have cracked from the clamp because when pushing saline a drop comes from the tubing. I notified our iv team and followed our procedure for possible exposure. Although my DON dosent believe that this was a posive exposure, I don't honestly trust her opinion because she didnt know ampicillin was in the pcn family.Note: there wasn't blood in the tubing when I got exposed. Should I be worried, do I need to follow up with a series of blood tests? Opinions are appreciated.