I was wondering what everyone thinks about this situation. I am 31 weeks pregnant and work on a med/surg floor as an RN. For at least the last 8 years, general conscensus amoung co-workers on my floor has been once a female nurse is pregnant she no longer will take patients on pre-cautions....MRSA, VRE, CDiff etc. We also ensure that these nurses dont take patients with chicken pox, shingles, necrotizing facitis, head lice, scabies. Basically nothing too contagious or too nasty.
Things have been going fine with this during my entire pregnancy-as well as for a few of my pregnant co-workers until recently I was floated to another unit (the icu). Here I was expected to take on two isolation patients. They presently have a pregnant nurse who will take any and all patients regardless of their diagnosis. But I refused as my floor had already let them know 3 hours before my shift began that a pregnant nurse would be floating and therefore the assignment needed to be 'clean'.
Well my refusal created a big stink I guess and now infection control is saying that there is NO reason why we cant care for any patient including shingles, chicken pox, menigitis and CMV. Im just upset and with so little time being left for my pregnancy (9 weeks) i hate to expose myself and my baby to something now. Am I being too cautious? Do you think my OBGYN would give me a doctors note to avoid isolation patients?
