A nurse wants to report me for not notifying them that my patient on the floor is HIV positive. Why? That’s what “Universal Precautions” are for, right?
A nurse wants to report me for not notifying them that my patient on the floor is HIV positive. Why? That’s what “Universal Precautions” are for, right?
secretwave101 
Yep. I agree. I assume it was also in the chart which I would hope she read?
When I was a nurse tech. in the ER, I can’t tell you the number of times I’d work with a patient for a certain amount of time and THEN be notified “Oh, by the way, we’re ruling out meningitis. You should be wearing a mask” or “Oh, by the way, that person has active TB” after the patient just coughed all over me. I never wound up with either disease, nor did we ever report anyone (though maybe we should have!)
The only time I ever spoke up about something was when I had a first-year resident who consistently left sharps on the lac trays for the techs to clean up (the attendings are very specific about not doing this–after all, the docs know where their sharps end up under all the drapes, etc.) I nearly cut myself on a dirty needle (it got my glove only) so I ended up mentioning it to the attending.
LikeLike
Report you for what? What rule did you break?
LikeLike
I guess the rule is that STD’s need to be reported to the nurse staff. This patient needed surgery, and I assisted with it. During the procedure, the surgeon kept telling us to be “extra careful” and deliberate with our movements.
To me, this seemed absurd. A good percentage of the time, we don’t know if a person has an STD, so we treat everyone as if they have one. In theory, there isn’t “more” we should be doing for confirmed cases.
LikeLike