Seeking job outside of inpatient due to severe hand dermatitis

Specialties Home Health

Updated:   Published

Specializes in Nicu.

Hi all,

I have severe hand dermatitis due to hand washing, I need to leave hospital nursing, I have even tried different soaps but nothing helps. I work in a NICU so its constant hand washing. Do you think working in home health, its less hand washing? Just due to the break of patient care from driving from home to home, and less machines constantly beeping .. I don't mean this in any bad way I know home health is a lot of work. Thanks, if anyone has any insight.?

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How are you with gloves? You are not getting away from hand washing in home health. You wash your hands when you enter and leave the home, before and after assessing the patient, before and after providing patient care, when handling anything soiled, all the same as if you were in an inpatient setting. If you find yourself in a nasty setting, you may wash your hands more.

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Specializes in ICU/ER/Med-Surg/Case Management/Manageme.

Perhaps you (and your hands) might be more suited to an office job - insurance/case management/workers comp, health coaching. I loved telephonic health coaching! You can use all your nursing knowledge/expertise in those areas while eliminating patient care and constant need to scrub. Best of luck to you.

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Home health agencies also hire nurses to do administrative duties in the office such as auditing documentation, maintaining charting, that part of case management involving calling doctors for orders, acting as telephonic liaison between nurses in the field and the clinical supervisors who may be out in the field or otherwise out of the office, obtaining staffing for call-outs, etc. In rare instances this nurse may be asked to provide emergency staffing on a case, but pretty much this is an office job that benefits from having an employee who is a nurse. Something to consider.

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

Hi nicurn. Great advice from the posters above. I just wanted to say I sympathize. The soap we were required to use at our hospital turned my hands lobster-ish.

Things did improve when I worked in an outpatient clinic, but their standard soap was milder "lotion-soap" and we started wearing gloves much more often.

Though you didn't mention it, I found seeing a dermatologist very helpful to zero in on the specific type of dermatitis you have and give you some samples to try. I do have allergies, but the dermatologist diagnosed it as dyshidrotic eczema.

Not fun at all, but it does flare up less often if I stay away from additives and wear gloves even to pick up a soapy sponge at home.

Best of luck to you in your job quest!

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I am in the same position, with severe dermatitis. A few years ago I developed hand rash problems. I went to a dermatologist who did patch testing to find out which chemicals I was allergic to. And then I was provided a list of safe products. It turns out that I am allergic to the soaps, and gloves. Not just latex. It is an allergy to the chemicals they use to make gloves, and so I have to special order gloves without the allergy Type 4 chemicals. However I am having more problems recently. It is terrible because I just graduated and have a new LPN, so I am not sure which direction to take, as a new nurse. I can only use certain soaps, lotions, gloves, hand sanitizer. It has affected everything. But I would say to you to also check out if it is the gloves you are allergic to.

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On 3/15/2020 at 9:15 AM, DallasRN said:

Perhaps you (and your hands) might be more suited to an office job - insurance/case management/workers comp, health coaching. I loved telephonic health coaching! You can use all your nursing knowledge/expertise in those areas while eliminating patient care and constant need to scrub. Best of luck to you.

How do you look for jobs for health coaching? This sounds very interesting!

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I'm bumping this to ask if anyone has tips for dealing with eczema and alcohol based sanitizers. I was a tech 5 years ago and a month after starting my job, my hands were cracked and bleeding. I had to stop using the hand sanitizers all together and go to soap and water. It helped a lot, but was massively time consuming. I never really found a solution. I got  lucky and my hospital switched to a CHG foam which actually made my skin softer. But now I'm starting my first job as an RN and I noticed the facility uses alcohol sanitizers. So what are your tips? I used Eucerin lotion the last time, but it didn't help much.

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