Your best(or worst) exposure story

[sistrmoon]

Here's mine: This PCA who constantly slacks, doesn't report pertinent info, etc left a foley bag unclamped after he drained it. He had tucked the end into the holder, just left it unclamped. Flooding the room with urine! I walked into the room and was standing in a lake of urine. Got everything mopped up, Cavi wiped my shoes, come in the next day to see the patient on contact for...wait for it...VRE in the urine. Ugh.

[fugu08]

Classic!

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

Oh my god that C Diff story! I thought getting C Diff stool on my light pink scrub pants and having to throw them away was bad. I'm going to keep my mouth tightly shut at work tonight(and wear 2 masks.)

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

Seriously, you're concerned because you stood in urine with VRE in it, with shoes and socks on? Yawn. Even barefooted, how is the VRE going to get through your feet? My hospital doesn't even isolate for VRE any more because new evidence shows it's not that contagious and people infected with it are usually just showing their own colonized strains, not strains from others. We haven't isolated for it for years and no increase in infections.

Eh, I wasn't really concerned about my shoes, more that I had walked in it, that the urine had been mopped up with I'm sure a non disposable mop, etc. So more concerned about spread in my own case. Interesting that y'all don't isolate for it. At my old hospital, we isolated if we even suspected C Diff. At this one, they don't isolate for it until a patient comes back positive. And this is the only hospital I've seen "spatial isolation" which is when one patient is positive for something and should be on contact and the other isn't and you're supposed to keep them 3 feet apart, have one use a commode, etc. Bad Idea Jeans.

All that said, the shoes could act as a fomite, make contact with something I touch with my hands and then I could touch my face or mouth. I'm not really a germophobe but basic infection control shows you don't have to get stool directly into your mouth to get infected with something.

[sistrmoon, BSN, RN]

I had a pt with a rectal tube and I was trying to empty the stool collection bag. I was having a hard time getting the cap off, so I pulled harder.. sending the cap shooting off and a full bag of horrid smelling liquid stool shooting all over me.

We don't empty our stool collection bags from rectal tubes. The whole thing comes off and gets discarded, a new one snaps on.

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

We don't empty our stool collection bags from rectal tubes. The whole thing comes off and gets discarded, a new one snaps on.

Same here with our new rectal tubes. Previously, we did have ones that were emptied.

[mnpetnurse]

Absolutely awesome! I am a brand new baby nurse, so this scares the pants off of me, but I was a vet tech for 25 years, so I can sympathize with sticking self while diazepaming seizuring patients. And being bitten. Definitely being bitten.

[mnpetnurse]

This takes the cake dear. I am a brand new, baby nurse, but in my 25 years of being a vet tech the closest thing to this was

a) vet has face in line with dog's behind and when she expresses said dog's anal glands, gets the juice from it shot into her mouth

b) different vet is debarking dog (snipping and ripping out its vocal cords with a biopsy tool), sedated dog coughs and splatters a little blood on her shirt. She proceeds to laugh wildly about it at which time said dog coughs giant blood clot into her mouth. I almost. peed. my. pants.

[gunny48]

@mnpetnurse: You'll fit right in....Welcome aboard! (Just don't laugh out loud in front of the patients)

[guest744967]

Worst: Showing a brand new nurse how to suction a trach. As she quickly whips the hose back after cleaning. Mucus flies off right smack on to my forehead and upperlip...I believe I purposely tried to swallow hand sanitizer that day.

Best: Very overbearing unpleasable family member..wanted to help clean her C.Diff father. I warned her to not lift up his buttcheek because he literally does a supersoaker action of poo. She tells me she is an experienced OR RN she knows what she is doing. She lifts it...it does an up in the air supersoak squirt right on her. She yells "MY WORD FATHER". It took everything for me to not keel over laughing. She was totally nicer to me after that one.

[blackvans1234]

^^ Sweet Sweet justice!

I wasn't exposed, but I did roll the patients bedside table to unearth a little turd sitting on the floor.

I chuckled to myself.

[tcvnurse, BSN, RN]

When I was a relatively young nurse I worked on a unit that did a lot of TURPS. (Do they even do those anymore?) Anyway, you had to flush the folly Q 4 hrs and suck out all the clots. So there I am with a toomey syringe full of blood clots and I go into the bathroom to empty it into the toilet. As I am squirting, a HUGE blood clot ejects from the syringe and sprays everywhere but especially my eyes!

ARRRRRGGHH. I ended up having to go down to the ED where they basically attached a suction cup to my eyeball and ran 2L of NS to rinse it out. Follow up testing was all negative. Was subsequently much more careful about disposing of the syringe.

[laKrugRN]

When I was in school, I was caring for a patient and just going along. It was a routine day. Got his orthostatics, gave him meds, and assisted him in the restroom. A nurse who worked on the floor stopped me on the way out and demanded why I was not gowned and gloved. I was confused. Nothing in his chart said anything (it hadn't been updated) and the sign that had "precations" has fallen and everyone failed to rehang it. He was positive for MRSA and C.Diff. I was horrified. Thankfully, nothing came of it but I was pretty irked by how negligent the hospital was! Shame on the staff as well!