Arrrrgggghhhh! Broken Thermometer!

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BlistexWorks

BlistexWorks

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Pardon the title, but it seems that when someone breaks a rectal thermometer at work (we have the old fashioned kind) the world is about to end or their immediate death by mercury poisoning will surely follow. No one seems to know how to correctly dispose of the beads! I've literally seen some people try to scoop them up in their bare hands to trying to mop them up. Others try to suck the beads with 3ml syringes or use a tongue depressor to join the beads and flick them on to a paper towel. I'm not exactly sure of the proper protocol but I've always insisted on them not being thrown away in the dumpster but rather placed in the sharps container.

Before going any further, do most clinics out there use the old-fashioned kind or do they use digital ones or ear thermometers? I've only seen the traditional ones being used at work.

Anyways, I was just wondering about the best way to dispose of a broken thermometer and its contents. Any interesting stories related to this out there?
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Of the three clinics I've worked at, two used digital thermometers of some kind and the last used traditional ones. I definitely prefer the digital ones. Trying to temp a dog gingerly with a glass thermometer whiling the dog is struggling is not fun. Although, I have had the probe cover for a digital thermometer get 'pulled up' into a dog's rectum too far to reach... so I guess it's a small trade off. 😛
 
I used to work in an environmental lab and when a thermometer broke (which happened frequently) we used a mercury spill kit. It had some kind of powder that you sprinkled on the mercury and then that was swept up.

As for the thermometer, the hospital I used to work at used the old-fashioned kind for a while but eventually went to the digital ones which is so much better.
 
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http://www.epa.gov/hg/spills/#thermometer

The official instructions.

We had a professor who suffered from merc poisoning in her early 20's. She could tell you if a thermometer was broken anywhere in the building within 24 hours. She said it was like kryptonite; walking into a building where it wasn't properly cleaned up made her feel like all the life was sucked out of her.

At this point, digitals are so much faster and safer, and are very cheap, that I don't understand why a clinic wouldn't update its' equipment
 
We are supplied with digital thermometers (each nurse has one thermometer that gets carried around with them, and disposable probe covers are used), but the nurses all go to CVS to buy the fast thermometers, as the ones supplied are slow. The residents wander around helplessly until they find a nurse; I think they must lose theirs in the first week. Same for scissors, etc. 😀
 
I've heard that the old thermometers are more accurate. Also sometimes the horses, if they're on edge already, don't like all the beeping coming from their ass.... lol!
 
True, but, IMO, the beeping is outweighed by having results in 30 seconds so you can minimize ass-fussing time!

The new ones claim they are accurate to within 0.2 degrees F. Seems pretty reasonable to me -- I've never seen the treatment change for a 102.0 temp vs. 102.2, or 102.8 vs. 103.0. I'm sure there are some who disagree, though. 🙂
 
I never know what to think about the digitals. I DEFINITELY prefer them for the convenience aspect. Plus it is nice having the flexible tip onces especially with cats!

At the equine hospital where I work each horse gets sold their own digital thermometer for biosecurity reasons and it lives at their stall. But sometimes the temps are crazy...take it once - 96.0, twice - 96.7, thrice - 99.0... I think the thermometers get angry in the cold barn, but shouldn't they techincally be able to accurately tell the temp within their time limit...?

I never know what to think? As a statistics dork, I feel as though I am tainting my data by searching for the results I "want"...

Sad, I am supposed to be at work right now, taking temperatures 🙁 My poor car was incompetently serviced at Jiffy Lube and as a result I found myself cruising down a dark highway with 50 feet steam trailing behind me. Poor car, poor over-caffienated me 🙁
 
anyone use ear thermometers that give a result in a few seconds? we don't, but that'd be convenient.

also.. are probe covers necessary if we wipe them down with alcohol after each use?
 
EqSci said:
I've heard that the old thermometers are more accurate.
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I've seen this too at work where we carried both mercury and digital thermometers and sometimes in comparing between the two, they were inaccurate. Some patients had to be warmed and monitored every say, 20min, until they reached 101 degrees so in those cases, accuracy counted. For extremely hypothermic patients I preferred mercury thermometers...even though I broke a few of them on our sinks, when 'shaking' the mercury back down, not good. We had spill kits for those nasty occasions.
 
DollyyLlama said:
anyone use ear thermometers that give a result in a few seconds? we don't, but that'd be convenient.

also.. are probe covers necessary if we wipe them down with alcohol after each use?
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There's a study in JAVMA that found they weren't very accurate. The problem with ear thermometers is they have to have a line of sight to the ear drum. Since dog ear canals are L-shaped, this is harder to do compared to people. And a lot of dogs hate having stuff in their ears more than they hate stuff in their butt. The butt end is also farther away from the biting end.
 
DollyyLlama said:
anyone use ear thermometers that give a result in a few seconds? we don't, but that'd be convenient.

also.. are probe covers necessary if we wipe them down with alcohol after each use?
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We do. If the pets wiggle it can be a bit hard to get a reading (I see Er4 - error 4 - in my nightmares) but they aren't too hard to use and they do get quick results. The strange thing is... a lot of animals would much rather have something in their butt than their ear. Maybe it's less proximate?

We use the covers, but they're very cheap. Some dogs have so much goop in their ears that it would be hard to clean off the probe...
 
There is an alternative to Hg and Digital. Usually a bimetallic alloy (also usually proprietary). Supposedly just as accurate (to 0.3 deg C), and biodegradable/non-toxic.

I hate digitals - not sure why - just never 'trusted' them.

As far as the liquid Hg, its really not that bad (Don't tell OSHA). But you can pretty much hold in and play with it, and almost none will get absorbed (even drink it). Hg is much more dangerous during vaporization - and afaik, nearly all poisoning is due to inhalation (or long long term exposure).

Now, again, afaik, the stories we all heard about Japanese towns and Hg in fish is a bit different. That is organic Hg, believe methylated by bacteria, and that is what is quite dangerous.

Obviously if you spill it you need to clean it up ASAP, otherwise it will lead to vapor (although the chemistry there is a bit mysterious to me... how does elemental Hg vaporize?, but it apparently does).

I think it has this crazy reputation because of its unusually properties - but on the list of things that can kill me, a broken thermometer (assuming its been removed from the orifice), is WAY on the bottom, next to Sharks with Lazers.

Anyway, don't breathe it in is my advice.
 
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We use digital exclusively. I work in a very crowded hospital and anything unnecessarily breakable and potentially toxic would be a disaster waiting to happen!

Everyone is issued a cheap, slow digital thermometer but pretty much everyone goes to Target or CVS to buy a quick read digital model. Most people have the Vicks brand, either with or without the flexi tip. It reads in less than 10 seconds, which is a godsend when you have a bunch of TPRs to do or when your patient won't hold still!

They do have a fairly limited lifespan - about 300 uses, which translates to about a month with how much I use mine. But it's well worth it. I figure 90 seconds saved each time, times 300 uses, comes to about 7.5 hours saved each month! There are a lot of other things I get to do with that time!
 
No Imagination said:
I think it has this crazy reputation because of its unusually properties - but on the list of things that can kill me, a broken thermometer (assuming its been removed from the orifice), is WAY on the bottom, next to Sharks with Lazers.

Anyway, don't breathe it in is my advice.
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Maybe it's acquired a poor reputation, but it didn't start out that way. People used to handle mercury with their bare hands (I'm talking like 30 years ago) with no qualms.
Source: Relative who was a high school chemistry teacher.

Now, there are very stringent regulations for its disposal, and obviously everybody knows it's harmful.
Source: Same relative, who is now a lab manager.

Anyway, the MSDS is gonna have far more information than any of us can come up with: http://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/96252.htm
(sumstorm's link is good too)
 
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I liked the Hg thermometers (thinking they were more accurate), but I did run into a problem (not an issue at a vet clinic obviously). I was keeping my horses at a barn that was a 40 minute drive from my home and one of my horses was sick. I was supposed to take temp 4 times per day and administer IV flunixin if he had a fever. The owner was nice enough to take his temp and call me if I needed to drive out. She left me a note saying "I can't read the thermometer, but I think his temp is normal"...I was uncomfortable enough to make the drive and discover that his temp was 102.5 (I also stopped at the drug store and bought a digital thermometer at the time).

I have only one real issue with thermometers...has anyone seen one with a hole in the end so that you can tie a string and clip to it? I normally just hang on to it...coincidentally, the time I used an Hg thermometer without a string, I stepped away for 30 seconds to grab something, sure enough, my horse pooped and I heard the thermometer shatter. The fun part was that I couldn't find any pieces of the thermometer and I ended up stripping the stall (I did end up finding it on the last few scoops of shavings).
 
The only time I really felt the NEED to have a Hg therm was when it was required working for NOAA. I needed it for marine mammal necropsies, but it was VERY large (nearly as long as my fore arm) and incredibly easy to read (and Hg for accuracy in the tenths...we had to record at half tenths like .20, .25, .30) but that was far larger than what one would want to use on a dog (just due to awkwardness.) The ones most clinics used may be more accurate but have small markings that the additional precision of the thermometer itself can be marred by the difficulty in reading it to that level of precision. Of course, that is just my experience. We have not had issues with accuracy, but we do routinely replace the digitals. They do have a termperature range for storage.
 
Thanks for all the info and links people!!
 
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