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Do you think patients have the right to know?
Should individuals with HIV apply to medical school?
Should individuals with HIV apply to medical school?
Doctors with HIV
- Thread starter starflower
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Hopefully that's not the biggest reason.
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Dude if anybody would even think of doing that...wow they would have to be pretty desperate
A lot of physicians who have HIV or Hepatitis C aren't the ones who had it when they applied but rather people who've contracted it from patients while performing surgeries and accidentally knicking themselves in the process.
The former Dean of Admissions at USF med school was not the PhD that is in the position now, but an MD who started the transplant program at USF COM in the 1970's and brought a lot to the program. He sadly contracted Hep C from a pt and had to retire. Although he was very old when he retired and had a good many years in practice, it is still very sad that he went through the process and one of many many reasons I'd never want to go into surgery.
But to get back to the point, most people who have HIV, etc. aren't applying but people who've been in practice and contracted from patients as I said before.
The former Dean of Admissions at USF med school was not the PhD that is in the position now, but an MD who started the transplant program at USF COM in the 1970's and brought a lot to the program. He sadly contracted Hep C from a pt and had to retire. Although he was very old when he retired and had a good many years in practice, it is still very sad that he went through the process and one of many many reasons I'd never want to go into surgery.
But to get back to the point, most people who have HIV, etc. aren't applying but people who've been in practice and contracted from patients as I said before.
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How common is it that a surgeon contracts it from a patient during surgery? I think I'm gonna reconsider surgery
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yea, I saw some statistics about surgeons contracting HIV. It's much more common than I thought.
Worst case scenario, can't they just go into a non-invasive specialty?
I don't see the problem of someone w/ HIV applying to med school. ADCOMs won't know and can't hold it against you.
T
TPROrgoTutor
If a physician has HIV I would think they should stay out of highly invasive fields such as surgery. Aside from that the patient need not know.
M
Mr. McDuck
I read something that said surgeons and first assistants suffer almost 60% of operating room needlesticks, which occur in something like 15% of operations. It's a couple years old though.
http://www.facs.org/about/committee...do needle sticks in the operating room occur"
http://www.facs.org/about/committee...do needle sticks in the operating room occur"
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I don't think there is any issue for a doc who isn't in a procedural specialty to have HIV. I definitely think that surgeons who contract HIV should be able to respecialize so they can continue to practice medicine. Also, couldn't that now infected surgeon run a practice that offers services to HIV patients, . . . its a pretty large population and I know alot of surgeons are wary of performing high risk surgeries on patients who are known to be infected. So if you have an HIV patient you could call that doc and let them take the case? Don't know if its feasible but maybe an idea?
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Folks with disease weakened immune systems are succeptible to a ton of bugs in the hospital that folks with normal immune systems don't really have to worry about. Thus there are actually implications beyond surgery.
T
TPROrgoTutor
I fully realize this. But the patient's well being was discussed here, not the docs. Additionally, takes a while to go from HIV ---> compromised immune system, hell some drugs can push that back significantly. I still see no problem.
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I agree that drugs can buy that doctor time, and that the patient isn't as at risk as the doctor. But is it wise for someone at higher risk to do a profession that will likely catch up to them at some point and make them sick far sooner than if they stayed far away from the hospital setting? (I don't have an answer for this). To some extent it's like swimming naked in a shark tank while everybody else is more safely in the shark cage -- eventually it's going to get ugly.
T
TPROrgoTutor
Quite the analogy, I like it.
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The HIV thing is one big reason i have never understood why there are still surgeons whom refuse to double glove during procedures because of suppossed lack of dexterity. That second set of gloves offers a huge decrease in the chances that a serious knick will occur..the risks of going single gloved far outweigh the benefit to me.
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To VOLUNTEER at a hospital you have to test for TB.. To be a Doctor with HIV i dont know.. but I DO KNOW.. TB < HIV
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Dude if anybody would even think of doing that...wow they would have to be pretty desperate
A friend of a friend got a STD from her boyfriend that you can only get from having sex with a cadavar. He worked in a morgue...
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Ha. Hopefully... :^) (if not for that whole disease thing, no harm, no pulse, no foul...
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TB is sooooo much more infectious than HIV, as is Hepatitis C, which was also mentioned in an earlier post. It is not all that easy to contract HIV, plus if you get stuck with a needle you can take prophylactic AZT, which will greatly reduce your risk of infection. The actual number of doctors who have contracted HIV from patients is quite small, though of course there are some cases. The reverse (patients contracting HIV from healthcare workers) is almost unheard of. The risk is there, but with proper precautions it is really minimal.
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I call bull**** with a capital B.
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The possibility of becoming infected with a patient's disease and dying from it is all part of the risk we take when we decided to become doctors. Have we forgotten that? Is the veil of the word "modern" in front of "medicine" supposed to protect us? I've heard many stories of early doctors who continued treating known-to-be contagious patients without having any idea what the nature of the illness was. Instead of just standing by, they continued to do their duties, and once contracting the disease continued to study it as their own bodies failed. If anyone is afraid of contracting disease then maybe medicine is not for you. This fear is what has kept many people out of the field of medicine for centuries. It's true that some specialties are inherently more risky than others, but if you're going to practice medicine in any meaningful way you will be exposed to things you never want to catch.
On a more humorous note.... You KNOW that if a doctor gave HIV to a patient they would sue the doctor for everything he's worth. Isn't it a little ironic that doctors can't sue patients for the same thing? There may be some cases...if a patient knows of his/her HIV but doesn't tell their physician, if they take proactive action to infect others, etc...but still, in this world the doctors bare all the responsibility with none of the reward (except perhaps the joy of prolonging a terminal patient's life so they have a longer period of time in which to spread it to others).
As for medical admissions...I think most committees would agree not to weigh this factor significantly into their decision. It's more than something like race or religion, but it's still something that a person can do nothing about except deal with it and make the most of their life anyway. Still, medical schools make a significant commitment to each student they accept, so there may be some school out there that might be less willing to make that commitment knowing their student's lifespan might be drastically reduced.
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If the only way to get that disease is to have sex w/ a cadavar, how did the boyfriend give it to her? She either was getting it on w/ the cadavar or the disease can be spread human-to-human.
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Ok, lemme rephrase. It isn't a typical STD, and you typically can only get it by having sex with a cadavar. It's still an STD, though, so it can be spread sexually.
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No, cadavers don't have diseases. They might bear disease-causing microorganisms, but you pretty much have to be alive in order to have a disease.
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Fortunately, this has nothing to do with the fact that banging a corpse is a bad idea.
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No, that's pretty much my only reason for frowning upon it. What other reason is there?
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I have talked to surgeons about that. Their response was that (1) you will still get nicked even with double gloves and (2) for intricate surgeries, without the added dexterity you cannot do your job. If you can't use your skills to fix the patient then what's the point of doing the surgery.
All physicians get nicked or needle-stuck at some point in the hospital setting, even non-surgeons. At some places all newbies in the wards are nicknamed "killer bees" because of their propensity to nick and stick others. Folks who get stuck are given prophylactic antibiotics and fortunately the percentage of people who come down with something in this manner is quite nominal. But that is a risk of medicine -- you are working with very sick people.
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Who are these crazy people thinking of having sex with cadavers...eeeow!
But anyway, the possibility of contracting HIV from patients during surgeries these days should be pretty small. There are sharps-resistant gloves these days that reduce that risk. But some docs refuse to use them and I don't know what they're thinking. But this doesn't come as a surprise to me anyway because even in the renowned hospital where I work, as in many others, it's widely known that doctors are the worst violators of infection control policies. Most of them have little regard for standard precautions. They're the ones who don't wash their hands between patients. They walk freely into contact isolation patients' rooms without their masks, gowns and gloves as if pathogens are respecters of higher degrees.
And no, patients don't have a right to know their doctors health status. They just have a right to know that their doctor is duly qualified to practice.
If an applicant contracted HIV before or during the application process, most medical schools now have statements saying that you must disclose this information. In many of these schools, if later found, wilful non-disclosure is punishable with explusion.
But anyway, the possibility of contracting HIV from patients during surgeries these days should be pretty small. There are sharps-resistant gloves these days that reduce that risk. But some docs refuse to use them and I don't know what they're thinking. But this doesn't come as a surprise to me anyway because even in the renowned hospital where I work, as in many others, it's widely known that doctors are the worst violators of infection control policies. Most of them have little regard for standard precautions. They're the ones who don't wash their hands between patients. They walk freely into contact isolation patients' rooms without their masks, gowns and gloves as if pathogens are respecters of higher degrees.
And no, patients don't have a right to know their doctors health status. They just have a right to know that their doctor is duly qualified to practice.
If an applicant contracted HIV before or during the application process, most medical schools now have statements saying that you must disclose this information. In many of these schools, if later found, wilful non-disclosure is punishable with explusion.
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kypdurron5 that is some Bull#@#$. we always want to make this medical profession sound like a freaking CULT. If u are not ready to contract AIDS and Hep C then don't go into medicine. What the hell is that?
4
45408
the preservatives they use for cadavers are also pretty toxic, so I doubt there's much that can survive in a cadaver tank.
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Well yea you still get nicked. I mean I worked in a kitchen where half my job was cutting stuff the entire day (mandatory two sets of gloves, granted no knot tying but I had to do some pretty difficult cutting of pineapples for decroative purposes.
)..but when you use the two different colored gloves it is still suppossed to reduce the chances dramatically. I believe there was a huge discussion about it in the surgery part of the forum a few months ago. A few of the surgery people were saying that if you start with using 2 sets of gloves then it was dexterity that was never missing to begin with..you just adjust to it. To each their own...the type of surgery probably plays a role too....a tk doesn't take quite the manual dexterity that a vascular surgery or whatever would take.
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I think there was some concern about prions (mad cow etc) being able to survive in treated cadavers.
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it's best to assume everyone has some disease. i'm actually more scared of hep C esp when i see the trauma come in cause they are usually people who are likely to carry those kind of fun diseases.
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4
45408
Ah, true. However, prions aren't really alive in any sense of the word (they just cause a cascade of other damaged proteins), so unless you denatured them (which would cause just a little bit of damage to the rest of the cadaver), they're going to still be there.
Here's a little tip though - don't eat the cadaver brains, and you should probably be okay.
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Not saying I believe the story, but sounds like some of you need to be reminded that cadavers in a morgue are not preserved like the cadavers in gross anatomy. The MS1 stiff has been soaking in formalin for months, whereas the body in the morgue may not even be stiff yet. Infection precautions are much more important. . . 
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We all get physicals before starting college, and I asume probaby medical school, and then everytime you go to a different hospital. But, to my knowledge HIV tests are not apart of that group of testing and while you could probaby ask for it, someone can't test you for it and not tell you.
I posted awhile back a thread about TB exposures after having a positive PPD myself that just goes to show how easy that is over other things to be exposed to. I think we should do everything we can to protect ourselves but sometimes things just happen with or without our knowledge or control and thats like it was said an occupational hazzard.
I posted awhile back a thread about TB exposures after having a positive PPD myself that just goes to show how easy that is over other things to be exposed to. I think we should do everything we can to protect ourselves but sometimes things just happen with or without our knowledge or control and thats like it was said an occupational hazzard.
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Apparently you've met my ex-girlfriend.Fortunately, this has nothing to do with the fact that banging a corpse is a bad idea.
