pregnancy don'ts

Furball · Jan 17, 2002

My heavens, I worked in a grocery store while pregnant...thats all I did was lift including CASES of turkeys during thanksgiving. I bent, squatted, lifted, pushed, pulled, yanked, wrapped, whatever and went full term. Everyone is an individual, however. Does this nurse have other problems?

MQ Edna · Jan 17, 2002

No, she has no other problems. She hadn't even been to a dr yet when she told me that. She's in her 20's and in great health. We'll see how it goes...

Trauma Columnist · Jan 17, 2002

Well, I was in the military when pregnant with son #1, worked fulltime up until the day before delivery. With son #2, worked until two hourse before delivery, went home next day and went back to work two weeks later. (I had to for financial reasons.) I don't advocate either solution but it can be done. In our ER, the nursing staff is frequently exposed to potential problems before they are aware of it.

fiestynurse · Jan 19, 2002

I would also stay away from Glutaraldehyde and other strong disinfectants that are frequently used in the hospital setting. A pregnant woman should not be breathing in fumes from these agents. In addition, be careful around chemotherapy drugs.

MarnnaRN · Jan 19, 2002

why not MRSA patients, I take those and VRE, C. diff, the only ones I am not required to take are herpes, cmv, shingles, the obvious ones. Obviously, no TB or respiratory isolation. I also, do lifting, squatting, bending and transferring, I have throughout and I am in week 22 of my first pregnancy. I never considered not doing those things. Unfortunately, sometimes it is too late when we find out about our patients infections. I took care of a guy whith a trach a month or so ago, who, had cmv, though we didn't find out until haflway through the shift, lucky me. But, at that time, the team leader switched that patient for another one for me.

e-nurse · Jan 19, 2002

I just learned this last night. Pregnant nurses can't care for heart transplants b/c of CMV. I was orienting to charge on nights and we were making out the day assignment and I was told that pregnant women can't take care of heart transplants.

MarnnaRN · Jan 27, 2002

I won't take cmv patients because I am pregnant. though, most nurses have been exposed and have had it, though we don't know it. The symptoms act like the flu, so nobody bothers to check into it, we just think we have the flu. I do take mrs, vre, c.diff, those are the most common ones.

jrmcdoug2 · Jan 31, 2002

I'm a mother/baby nurse and about a year ago I was pregnant and loss the baby really early12 weeks. I started bleeding at 7 weeks. I'll tell you what. The next time I am pregnant, I'm not doing anything strenuous. Period. I'm not saying that every nurse should be like that. It's just that it seems I have a very weak uterus.

frann · Feb 9, 2002

When I was preg. I asked our infection dr. and he said we could not take care of mrsa/vre pts because if we get the infection we would not be able to take the medication to treat.

reyna · Feb 9, 2002

i'm on my early first trimester and is about to have a job interview ...would me being pregnant have any bearing with the job? we have our usual physical exam after the interview , so there's no point of not telling...does this also means i cannot work in an acute health care facility?

RNKitty · Feb 9, 2002

They cannot legally ask about you being pregnant or your plans to have a family. Don't offer if you don't want them to know.

Franca · Feb 10, 2002

Molly J's pdf documents were excellent resources. The Web site Molly gave for the pdf doc. regarding workplace hazards (the second post) had info. about MSDSs on page 18 (I'm sorry that I couldn't copy from page 18 to here). Perhaps your employer has MSDSs (material safety data sheets) that would give you information as to known hazards also. I know very little about MSDSs; but I'm supposing they are for citing hazards from chemicals.

The pdf document supports the idea that not all hazards are known and research is being undertaken (see page 20) to uncover them.