Pregnancy and Chemo

[sjg18]

I am a fairly new nurse who is about 19 weeks pregnant. The other day I floated to the oncology unit at the hospital and was assigned to a patient who had received chemo only about 21 hours prior to my working with him. The staff told me about the normal chemo precautions in taking care of body secretions. During the shift the patient got nauseated and vomited. I had the vinyl gloves on (not the chemo gloves) and some of the vomit got on my arm. After getting the patient situated, I rinsed off my arm but it had probably been about 5-10 minutes after the incident. I told a couple of the nurses that normally work on that unit, and they said I would be OK, so I never filled out an incident report. It's been bugging me ever since it happened. Is this something I should worry about regarding the safety of the baby?

[julieK]

I don't want to say for sure that you'll be okay b/c who knows? But I work on an Onc floor and was pregnant when I started. When dealing with actual chemo, you want to be wearing gown and gloves, but when dealing with body secretions, I think that just a little vomit on the arm probably won't hurt you. I think it would be more the type of thing that you get exposed to day in and day out that you might want to be more cautious of. The oncology nursing society web site might have more info for you.

Hth,

Julie in NYC