Should you be able to refuse an isolation assignment when pregnant?

[SteveNNP]

Hi,

This issue has come up a few times over my career, and I was wondering what you all think. In this day and age of MRSA, VRE, and ESBL, do you believe that a pregnant RN can refuse to care for an isolation assignment of this type? I understand that there are many infections in whose case the RN must NOT be pregnant (varicella, rubella, HSV, etc) However, a few pregnant coworkers over the years have repeatedly refused to care for routine isolation pts. Usually the effort had been made to reassign those pts, but in some cases, it's impossible. I often got the feeling that they did so because they just didn't want to care for isolation kids to begin with. Any thoughts?

edit: apparently I forgot to add the modifier: pregnant to the poll.... please vote as if I had...

[elizabells, BSN, RN]

One of our nurses had an assignment last night with 3 babies, all on isolation, for 3 different things. VRE, klebsiella, MRSA - the MRSA kid didn't actually have it, but had been in a room with a kid who did so ID had us put him on CI. She's 17 weeks. I think she's a rockstar, and I'm in the "depends on the situation" camp.