Taking Precautions

According to the news, there is a lot of flu going around and, unfortunately, the flu shots that people got last fall do not seem to be helping with the worst of the strains this year. Still, I got a shot this year and so far---knock on wood---have not lost any days to flu, as I have in the past when I skipped the shots.

This got me thinking about the risks that all medical personnel get from their jobs and the precautions needed to preserve our health. For instance, when SARS affected Canadians in 2003, it was health personnel---doctors, nurses and radiographers---who had the most exposure to the disease. Certainly taking a chest radiograph of someone with a serious cough can expose one to risk of getting the flu, pneumonia or other disease that brought them to the hospital. Of course, one can wear a mask in this situation but health risks aren't always so obvious. 

I remember one time a radiographer I worked with had gone home to her family before she found that a patient she handled had just been diagnosed with a highly contagious disease. Luckily, she and her family were not infected, but it was a rather frightening experience for her family.

When I first started working in nuclear medicine in 1984, everyone received TB tests and flu shots. Once the vaccine for hepatitis B became available, it was only given to the physicians, nurses and phlebotomists. It took several months for me to convince the administration that it should be available to the nuclear medicine technologists as well because we were also handling blood products. Eventually, they were convinced and included all of radiology in the voluntary vaccination for this disease. Although in most people, hepatitis B can be a mild disease, it can cause liver inflammation, vomiting, jaundice and even, although rare, death. In addition, it may become a chronic condition that could lead to liver cirrhosis or even liver cancer.

In a 1987 document the Centers for Disease Control recommended that "blood and body fluid precautions be consistently used for all patients regardless of their bloodborne infection status." This extension of blood and body fluid precautions to all patients is known as universal precautions. "Under universal precautions, blood and certain body fluids of all patients are considered potentially infectious for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and other bloodborne pathogens."

I am sure all of you are well aware of and use these precautions, but what about those illnesses like flu and colds that you are also exposed to in your work? For these diseases, which you can also catch from your fellow worker by handling the phone or other objects right after their use, the best protection is careful hand-washing. Although this preventative measure has been known for years, many surveys show that it is not used as often as it should be. So while it may be too late to get your flu shot, it is never too late to make a habit of careful hand-washing, especially in between patients and before touching your face or eating.

What other precautions do you take to make sure you and your patients are protected from communicable diseases? Write and let me know.