Katinka

Hi Everyone, I am a new Nurse (second career, was an RRT for 15 years) and I am 19 weeks pregnant working on a medical floor. I was wondering how other Nurses and their department managers have dealt with assignments when a pt has an infection that is potentially dangerous to a pregnant mom. I had a pt last week that was diagnosed with CMV, found out after I worked with him that he was positive, and now have to be tested. I had to specifically request that I not be given this patient again and there is no specific precaution in place other than contact precautions warning pregnant women. So on the night that I had to request to not be assigned this pt, I was assigned a patient with disseminated herpes zoster. When I told the charge nurse that I didn't feel that was an appropriate assignment she basically said oh well, maybe the others nurses can help you. I went to my Director and she was rather unconcerned about it and basically said that while the hospital does not have specific indications regarding my not working with these patients, she felt that out of courtesy my assignment should have been changed. Her solution was for me to call her if this happens again. I think it needs to be addressed with the charge nurses before this happens again, not if it happens again. Most of the charge nurses are young and have never been pregnant and seem to have a rather non-chalant attitude about this. I am really upset about this and my husband is horrified and livid. I have been in this department for 3 months but am not sure this is where I want to continue to work. Am I overreacting, is this just pregnancy hormones making me upset or do other departments arrange assignment to preserve the safety of their pregnant employees? I don't want special treatment, I just want to keep my baby safe. As an aside, our assignments are based soley on location, not on patient acuity. There are 21 beds and they are divided into 4 assigments regardless of the patient needs. So one nurse can end up with 5 walkie talkie easy patients while the other has 5 high acuity patients. I know this is part of the reason why the charge nurses have a problem changing assigments but don't I have rights too? Thanks for any input! Rebecca