when you go into medicine, you know you're probably going to get some human waste on you at one time or another. i remember warning my little sister about this when she was considering going into nursing. i promised her that any number of colorful bodily fluids would end up finding their way to her clothes, skin, possibly and awfully, into her eyes/mouth. not at all pleasant to consider, but definitely does happen.
and that's not even counting that funky spunk that could be in said fluids.
yesterday, i was doing a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter), which is a fairly invasive, bloody procedure, on a patient with hepatitis. no accidental needle sticks or scary oopses occurred, but this happens not infrequently that we are at risk of exposure. we health care professionals do procedures like this and surgery on patients with hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, chicken pox/shingles, MRSA/VRE, tuburculosis, etc, etc quite often.
we use this safety protocol now called "universal precautions" which means we pretty much never should be touching a patient without wearing gloves. and if they have any known current infection (in lungs, on skin, in stool, etc), we might also wear a gown and mask. but it can get pretty lax. in the OR, we all wear sterile masks, gowns and usually 2 pairs of gloves and we're uber careful when passing/using knives and needles. but i must admit that if we know a patient has a blood borne infection, we proceed with extra EXTRA caution.
lately, everyone in my department has been trying to get pregnant. and though we get fairly cavalier about the whole exposure thing when we're only putting ourselves at risk, it's a whole other ball of wax when you're talking about a vulnerable fetus inside you. in addition to all these nasty pathogens, we work in a fairly hostile environment for growing bebes. cement and xray are both known teratogens and we do our best to stay out of cases that use them (total joint replacements, fracture repairs, etc), but it's a challenge.
some days it feels like to be totally risk-free i would have to leave medicine all together. which i'm not going to do. so i guess you do your best to protect yourself and don't take undue risks while also not living in total paranoia.
no problem, right?
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