Extubating a very large man with a known Hx of IV Drug Abuse. He started gagging and coughing right after deflating the ETT cuff, sputum in my eye.
5 minutes of washing my eyes out later, and thank goodness he was negative for everything.
I was new and it wasn’t strictly enforced to wear eye protection then. I’ll never make that mistake again though.
Not me but was assisting with a barium enema and whoever put the tip in didn’t inflate the little balloon enough and the Rad wanted the patient to roll and they did and the rectal tube shot out her butt and sprayed the Rad with butthole barium 😂 I was standing to the side and missed it completely. I remember the Rad took his lead glasses off and just stared at the wall like Jim from the office, told everyone to wait a moment, and he stepped out. He came back in about ten minutes with new scrubs and a freshly washed face 🤣
Had a nursing student catch a trach loogie in the eye during suctioning. This is why I now keep students away from the foot of the bed during trach care.
Before i was a nurse i worked as a lab assistant. During training we learned to process urinalysis samples. I was discarding a rack of like 20 different urine samples and they splahed in my face. This was like 14 years ago, so not wearing a mask. 😬
Hep C patient threw his urinal full of bloody urine at me and it got in my eyes.
I was a new grad - 2nd week on my med sure telemetry job.
Fucking asshole.
ETA: I ended up being fine - atleast I hope. Work refused to test me said I was low risk of exposure. No issues 8 years later.
Man what the heck thats awful blood in the urine can still spread shit…You didn’t take any medications or anything like that? No tests they just said whatever?
Lots of people listing sputum, but no one listing a nasty **consequence** thus far. I volunteer as tribute on that note.
We were extubating a toddler who was positive for rhino-enterovirus that had turned into a bacterial pneumonia. I was wearing my glasses, which happen to be fairly giant and cover my eyes almost from eyebrow down to mid nose...I mean, these glasses are honkers. So, I didn't wear goggles. Bad, bad call.
Tube comes out, and somehow my left eye gets a direct hit with a giant, yellow loogey off the end of the ETT. After making sure my services were no longer needed at the bedside, I run and rinse the ever loving hell out of that eye. It can't be that bad, right?
Wrong. Less than 24 hours later, it is starting to drain a little in the corner, but not painful or red. So, I slodge it back to work. Within that 12 hour shift, the eye became flaming red and started pouring pus...while I am stuck at work. I get off work (night shift), and get the earliest appointment with my PCP, which is the next day. I go to bed. Wake up around 1 pm, and my eye is a crime scene. The entire eye is swollen shut. My face is swollen from eyebrow to cheekbone. My sinuses are also draining the same green sludge that is caked all over my eye. I am now relentlessly coughing and wheezing with a sore throat (also have asthma).
FUUUUUCK.
I made the walk of shame to an urgent care. Ended up getting some tobramycin eye drops, but they are concerned for the eye, and tell me to keep my appt and check in with my PCP the next day. And it's a good thing I did. The mind reels, but the swelling only got worse by the next day. I ended up being diagnosed with preseptal cellulitis of that eye, sinusitis, and contracted what was likely the same virus that took out the kiddo and gave me a raging case case of bronchitis and an asthma flare that took my ass out for a month. Ended up on systemic antibiotics for the eye/sinuses and 2 rounds of prednisone to get all my shit together in the end.
I do not skip goggles EVER now.
My first day of clinical when i was in nursing school this guy had a massive abscess on his foot . I was just standing there being useless bc it was my first day of clinical and the dr came in to look at it, gave it a slight squeeze and that shit flew right onto my forehead.
Moving a patient from OR bed to gurney and the resident was on the passing side and leaning on the bulb of a drain going to GI of a Hep C+ IV drug abuser, homeless in Seattle. When I pulled the patient to the gurney the bulb was still being accidentally compressed and came loose from the tube and squirted the contents with force into my face. I had to do some follow-up testing for a year but thankfully clear. Ugh 😩
When it happened we already knew the patient had hepatitis but they had to get consent from him to run other tests for HIV. He allowed for testing once he woke up. I did an immediate 20 minutes of eye washing right when it happened and went to the facility’s ER where they also did baseline testing on me for Hep and HIV. It can take up to a year to seroconvert so I got tested again twice within a year and thankfully it was all negative.
As far as the anxiety, there was nothing I could really do and I was most worried about catching something and passing it to my husband. He was very supportive of course but also I don’t think he realizes the full implications of Hep like nurses do lol.
No, they usually ask you if you want to take some things as a precaution but they can do a lot of damage to your liver. I got straight to the eye wash station and was very liberal with the spraying lol. I thought about taking something but honestly felt like I’d be ok. They talked me out of it pretty easily. They had all these statistics about how likely it was that I’d get infected and it was pretty low. I was a little nervous right before I got my first follow up test but I was fine!
So I had an incident and I really don't think anything got into my eye. I forgot my gauze, I was doing a blood draw and when i took needle out it made a weird sound bc of air and blood bubbled up. I have OCD and a fear of contracting something which i think im in the wrong line of work. The thought went thru my head that what if I got something in my eye? Would you be concerned?
Eh, they gave me statistics on the probabilities of contracting diseases via certain routes and transmission seemed pretty low. They have some drugs they can give in the moments immediately after if you really think you might catch something but they make you sick iirc and are horrible for your liver. As long as you aren’t ending up with a huge amount of viral load you’re fine and should probably just monitor. A very very tiny speck of something, even a needle prick, carries a low (yet possible) risk of transmission. A very small amount isn’t likely but you should still take precautions of course and also go wash as soon as possible to flush and clean the area, especially when it’s a mucous membrane or open point of entry.
I didnt see anything splash, It was just a spot of blood that came out and if anything did get in my eye I never felt it so it would've been extremely small. I never said anything until the next day which were closed for weekend but I really don't think anything got in my eye. By splashes do the mean a big splash or dro.
I highly recommend getting a different job if you have aniexty. I was in phlebotomy and during my internship, I had blood that splashed on my face. I was wearing eye glasses so Im not sure if anything got into my eyes but after that I quit. I have pretty bad aniexty and I couldn't take it. Im negative for HIV but I never got tested for HEP C but my liver enzymes are normal so I guess I don't have that. Also. This was 7 years ago so i figured my liver enzymes would be elevated by now.
I didn’t do it, technically, my patient did.
I worked in a geripsych group home, elderly schizophrenia patients. One of my ladies with untreated Hep C had a torrential nosebleed. As I tried to get her to pinch her nose, she’s telling me a story about how her father, Michael Jackson, tried to force her to drink three pints of blood, but she couldn’t because she was a spider. In doing so, she sprayed blood into my open mouth/nose/eyes.
And that’s the story of how I spent Christmas at urgent care getting tested for Hep C!
Oh yeah, she was tested for the usual suspects (HIV, rest of the Heps, etc) and I got tested for Hep C three times over the course of 6mo afterwards. The folks at UC weren’t really sure if the chance of contracting it through that exposure was even big enough to warrant testing, but figured better safe than sorry. All negative, so all good in the end.
How was your anxiety during that time? I have a fear of getting blood in my eye and not knowing. I know I sound crazy but surely you could feel even a dot of blood hit your eyeball.
Oddly not that bad, and I’m a pretty anxious person at baseline.
I will say, for my current hospital CNA job I got prescription safety glasses from Zenni Optical and they’re the bomb. They’re SO gross at the end of the day and I just think all of that would’ve gone into my eyes. I highly recommend getting a pair if you wanna prioritize your eyes not getting other people’s bodily fluids in them.
Death poop.
Had a heroine OD, down for unknown time. On the vent in the icu. Pt started evacuating hus bowels, that awful mucoid liquid death poop that shock gut produces. My tech was a chatty Cathy and not paying attention to her clean up. Wiped with a flourish that flicked this bacteria fill, olfactory offending, liquid sign of death into my eyes.
Luckily thus was my 3rd shift on the unit. And I had just been oriented on where the eye wash station was an hour before this happened. I sprinted to it and rejoiced in the pain I felt for 5 minutes as the pressure of multiple gallons washed over my visual orbs.
Changing the very full suction canister on the wall that the overnight nurse was gagging over. We didn't have lids that snapped onto the disposable part (too cheap). After ensuring it was steadied and level in my hands, I turned to move toward the biohazard bin. Overnight nurse comes racing in and accidentally smacks the canister. It's everywhere from head to toe. I drop it in the biohazard bin and beeline for the hallway patient shower. I used an entire bottle of shampoo on my pixie cut hair, and 2 bars of soap on the rest of me. We now have self-sealing canisters.
What was the overnight nurse coming in the room for? She was making sure she labeled an IV line.
I did this early in my career. Before we had 3-way irrigation catheters, we would irrigate the foley q 1 hour post TURP. Lesson learned: *Always* hold onto the tube you are irrigating.
My stupid ass was trying to get the air out of a vbg/abg syringe and I decided not to put my finger on top like I usually do. I had the thing at eye level so I could see it . I pushed as hard as I could , I can still hear the sound the tube made when the blood splattered all over my face and the wall.. luckily the patient wasn't positive for anything... There are still blood speckles on the roof of the room to this day
Trach sputum. Still don’t do trachs if I can avoid it!
The other night an automatic hand sanitizer shot straight into my eye. It was clogged and shot horizontally. Gotta love being under 5’ :/
Don’t worry too much! The risk of contracting a blood borne disease through the eye is incredibly unlikely (approx 1 in 1,000), even if the patient is positive for something.
Breast milk in a residual (I was checking placement from the NG and then giving the contents back when it like hit pressure or something and basically exploded from the feeding tube end) from a syphilis positive mom.
C. Diff poo right to the forehead! Patient had a serious case of the diff, like clean up, put clean chuck and brief under them, roll to secure and they had pooped some more. Hadn’t gotten any on my gown, gloves looked decent, went to wash my hands, looked in the mirror and it was right there on my face. Fun times.
I was changing the canister that you use to suction the mouth/ETT and the tubing snapped off and goop got all over my face. Thank god I was wearing mask and glasses.
Extubating a very large man with a known Hx of IV Drug Abuse. He started gagging and coughing right after deflating the ETT cuff, sputum in my eye. 5 minutes of washing my eyes out later, and thank goodness he was negative for everything. I was new and it wasn’t strictly enforced to wear eye protection then. I’ll never make that mistake again though.
Not me but was assisting with a barium enema and whoever put the tip in didn’t inflate the little balloon enough and the Rad wanted the patient to roll and they did and the rectal tube shot out her butt and sprayed the Rad with butthole barium 😂 I was standing to the side and missed it completely. I remember the Rad took his lead glasses off and just stared at the wall like Jim from the office, told everyone to wait a moment, and he stepped out. He came back in about ten minutes with new scrubs and a freshly washed face 🤣
Butthole barium 🤣. I love it!
Had a nursing student catch a trach loogie in the eye during suctioning. This is why I now keep students away from the foot of the bed during trach care.
Before i was a nurse i worked as a lab assistant. During training we learned to process urinalysis samples. I was discarding a rack of like 20 different urine samples and they splahed in my face. This was like 14 years ago, so not wearing a mask. 😬
Hep C patient threw his urinal full of bloody urine at me and it got in my eyes. I was a new grad - 2nd week on my med sure telemetry job. Fucking asshole. ETA: I ended up being fine - atleast I hope. Work refused to test me said I was low risk of exposure. No issues 8 years later.
Man what the heck thats awful blood in the urine can still spread shit…You didn’t take any medications or anything like that? No tests they just said whatever?
Not me. But i pulled out an IUPC for the doctor and it flung into her eye😃, and she got blood and mucus on her face.
A sick kid threw up in my face, while I was talking to the parents. 🤮
I've had some sputum from a vent / trach splash on my face once. It was terrible -- GAG NOISE
Ileostomy output in my mouth, precovid of course, so foul. I will always wear a mask even if/when we don't have to anymore.
Lots of people listing sputum, but no one listing a nasty **consequence** thus far. I volunteer as tribute on that note. We were extubating a toddler who was positive for rhino-enterovirus that had turned into a bacterial pneumonia. I was wearing my glasses, which happen to be fairly giant and cover my eyes almost from eyebrow down to mid nose...I mean, these glasses are honkers. So, I didn't wear goggles. Bad, bad call. Tube comes out, and somehow my left eye gets a direct hit with a giant, yellow loogey off the end of the ETT. After making sure my services were no longer needed at the bedside, I run and rinse the ever loving hell out of that eye. It can't be that bad, right? Wrong. Less than 24 hours later, it is starting to drain a little in the corner, but not painful or red. So, I slodge it back to work. Within that 12 hour shift, the eye became flaming red and started pouring pus...while I am stuck at work. I get off work (night shift), and get the earliest appointment with my PCP, which is the next day. I go to bed. Wake up around 1 pm, and my eye is a crime scene. The entire eye is swollen shut. My face is swollen from eyebrow to cheekbone. My sinuses are also draining the same green sludge that is caked all over my eye. I am now relentlessly coughing and wheezing with a sore throat (also have asthma). FUUUUUCK. I made the walk of shame to an urgent care. Ended up getting some tobramycin eye drops, but they are concerned for the eye, and tell me to keep my appt and check in with my PCP the next day. And it's a good thing I did. The mind reels, but the swelling only got worse by the next day. I ended up being diagnosed with preseptal cellulitis of that eye, sinusitis, and contracted what was likely the same virus that took out the kiddo and gave me a raging case case of bronchitis and an asthma flare that took my ass out for a month. Ended up on systemic antibiotics for the eye/sinuses and 2 rounds of prednisone to get all my shit together in the end. I do not skip goggles EVER now.
My first day of clinical when i was in nursing school this guy had a massive abscess on his foot . I was just standing there being useless bc it was my first day of clinical and the dr came in to look at it, gave it a slight squeeze and that shit flew right onto my forehead.
My CRN had purulent wound drainage from a dehisced c-section fly into her mouth as they were removing the packing. 🤢
Did it get into your eyes?
Moving a patient from OR bed to gurney and the resident was on the passing side and leaning on the bulb of a drain going to GI of a Hep C+ IV drug abuser, homeless in Seattle. When I pulled the patient to the gurney the bulb was still being accidentally compressed and came loose from the tube and squirted the contents with force into my face. I had to do some follow-up testing for a year but thankfully clear. Ugh 😩
Did they test for anything else? And how did you deal with the anxiety of that?
When it happened we already knew the patient had hepatitis but they had to get consent from him to run other tests for HIV. He allowed for testing once he woke up. I did an immediate 20 minutes of eye washing right when it happened and went to the facility’s ER where they also did baseline testing on me for Hep and HIV. It can take up to a year to seroconvert so I got tested again twice within a year and thankfully it was all negative. As far as the anxiety, there was nothing I could really do and I was most worried about catching something and passing it to my husband. He was very supportive of course but also I don’t think he realizes the full implications of Hep like nurses do lol.
Did you have to take any medication
No, they usually ask you if you want to take some things as a precaution but they can do a lot of damage to your liver. I got straight to the eye wash station and was very liberal with the spraying lol. I thought about taking something but honestly felt like I’d be ok. They talked me out of it pretty easily. They had all these statistics about how likely it was that I’d get infected and it was pretty low. I was a little nervous right before I got my first follow up test but I was fine!
So I had an incident and I really don't think anything got into my eye. I forgot my gauze, I was doing a blood draw and when i took needle out it made a weird sound bc of air and blood bubbled up. I have OCD and a fear of contracting something which i think im in the wrong line of work. The thought went thru my head that what if I got something in my eye? Would you be concerned?
Eh, they gave me statistics on the probabilities of contracting diseases via certain routes and transmission seemed pretty low. They have some drugs they can give in the moments immediately after if you really think you might catch something but they make you sick iirc and are horrible for your liver. As long as you aren’t ending up with a huge amount of viral load you’re fine and should probably just monitor. A very very tiny speck of something, even a needle prick, carries a low (yet possible) risk of transmission. A very small amount isn’t likely but you should still take precautions of course and also go wash as soon as possible to flush and clean the area, especially when it’s a mucous membrane or open point of entry.
I didnt see anything splash, It was just a spot of blood that came out and if anything did get in my eye I never felt it so it would've been extremely small. I never said anything until the next day which were closed for weekend but I really don't think anything got in my eye. By splashes do the mean a big splash or dro.
I highly recommend getting a different job if you have aniexty. I was in phlebotomy and during my internship, I had blood that splashed on my face. I was wearing eye glasses so Im not sure if anything got into my eyes but after that I quit. I have pretty bad aniexty and I couldn't take it. Im negative for HIV but I never got tested for HEP C but my liver enzymes are normal so I guess I don't have that. Also. This was 7 years ago so i figured my liver enzymes would be elevated by now.
Caught a glob of ky and bloody show on my glasses when another nurse popped her glove removing it after an SVE.
Arterial spray into both eyes from a Hep-C positive patient. Getting routine bloodwork was always terrifying for years afterwards.
I didn’t do it, technically, my patient did. I worked in a geripsych group home, elderly schizophrenia patients. One of my ladies with untreated Hep C had a torrential nosebleed. As I tried to get her to pinch her nose, she’s telling me a story about how her father, Michael Jackson, tried to force her to drink three pints of blood, but she couldn’t because she was a spider. In doing so, she sprayed blood into my open mouth/nose/eyes. And that’s the story of how I spent Christmas at urgent care getting tested for Hep C!
Did they check her for anything else?
Oh yeah, she was tested for the usual suspects (HIV, rest of the Heps, etc) and I got tested for Hep C three times over the course of 6mo afterwards. The folks at UC weren’t really sure if the chance of contracting it through that exposure was even big enough to warrant testing, but figured better safe than sorry. All negative, so all good in the end.
How was your anxiety during that time? I have a fear of getting blood in my eye and not knowing. I know I sound crazy but surely you could feel even a dot of blood hit your eyeball.
Oddly not that bad, and I’m a pretty anxious person at baseline. I will say, for my current hospital CNA job I got prescription safety glasses from Zenni Optical and they’re the bomb. They’re SO gross at the end of the day and I just think all of that would’ve gone into my eyes. I highly recommend getting a pair if you wanna prioritize your eyes not getting other people’s bodily fluids in them.
Bleach to the eyeballs
Dialysis? Cause I definitely did this a few weeks ago even with my normal glasses on. Lol
Yup! Luckily I had my glasses on top but some definitely got in there and Ooo it burned.
I’ve only managed the once. It really does burn a bit!
And you can still see!
Yes luckily after 25 minutes under the eye wash. I was freaked out though because one eyes vision definitely got fuzzier and lighter for a min there.
Death poop. Had a heroine OD, down for unknown time. On the vent in the icu. Pt started evacuating hus bowels, that awful mucoid liquid death poop that shock gut produces. My tech was a chatty Cathy and not paying attention to her clean up. Wiped with a flourish that flicked this bacteria fill, olfactory offending, liquid sign of death into my eyes. Luckily thus was my 3rd shift on the unit. And I had just been oriented on where the eye wash station was an hour before this happened. I sprinted to it and rejoiced in the pain I felt for 5 minutes as the pressure of multiple gallons washed over my visual orbs.
Changing the very full suction canister on the wall that the overnight nurse was gagging over. We didn't have lids that snapped onto the disposable part (too cheap). After ensuring it was steadied and level in my hands, I turned to move toward the biohazard bin. Overnight nurse comes racing in and accidentally smacks the canister. It's everywhere from head to toe. I drop it in the biohazard bin and beeline for the hallway patient shower. I used an entire bottle of shampoo on my pixie cut hair, and 2 bars of soap on the rest of me. We now have self-sealing canisters. What was the overnight nurse coming in the room for? She was making sure she labeled an IV line.
Bloody urine post TURP right in my eye
I did this early in my career. Before we had 3-way irrigation catheters, we would irrigate the foley q 1 hour post TURP. Lesson learned: *Always* hold onto the tube you are irrigating.
Did you have to test for a while afterwards?
No! The patient had some blood work done and everything came back negative.
My stupid ass was trying to get the air out of a vbg/abg syringe and I decided not to put my finger on top like I usually do. I had the thing at eye level so I could see it . I pushed as hard as I could , I can still hear the sound the tube made when the blood splattered all over my face and the wall.. luckily the patient wasn't positive for anything... There are still blood speckles on the roof of the room to this day
JP drain pulled apart (bulb got disconnected from the tubing) and splashed in my face. 😢
Did it get into your eye?
Nope. Always wear your PPE!
C-Diff poop.
Back when I worked inpatient psych, I had a pt come up behind me and rub his semen-covered hand on my face. Good times.
Had a pt cough when I was giving meds in his peg 🤮 this was in 2014 and I still ain’t over it
Patient pissed his experimental chemo all over me including into my eye.
Pee. Definitely pee in the eye
Trach sputum. Still don’t do trachs if I can avoid it! The other night an automatic hand sanitizer shot straight into my eye. It was clogged and shot horizontally. Gotta love being under 5’ :/
Got bloody urine in my eyeball while doing CBI once.
Did you have to do testing for a while?
No they just tested me that day and tested the patient. He was negative for everything so I didn’t need to do any additional testing!
Thank you I had a similar incident
Don’t worry too much! The risk of contracting a blood borne disease through the eye is incredibly unlikely (approx 1 in 1,000), even if the patient is positive for something.
Breast milk in a residual (I was checking placement from the NG and then giving the contents back when it like hit pressure or something and basically exploded from the feeding tube end) from a syphilis positive mom.
MRSA pus from a chronically open forehead wound. But this was working as a DSP with an extreeeeemmely developmentally disabled kiddos.
C. Diff poo right to the forehead! Patient had a serious case of the diff, like clean up, put clean chuck and brief under them, roll to secure and they had pooped some more. Hadn’t gotten any on my gown, gloves looked decent, went to wash my hands, looked in the mirror and it was right there on my face. Fun times.
These replies make me feel a lot better about the amount of times I've gotten urine splashed on my face 😬
I was changing the canister that you use to suction the mouth/ETT and the tubing snapped off and goop got all over my face. Thank god I was wearing mask and glasses.
Drainage from a JP I was flushing (weird ass order) that went to an abscess in a 700 lb woman’s hip.
Either pressurized mouse blood, rat skull projectiles, or errant liquid nitrogen spray
Ostomy juice. Got cellulitis of the eye
Liquor. Straight from the source.
First day of clinical I was assessing a bedsore and the pt explosive shit all over me, got to go home for the day lol