Health and safety during pregnancy

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

Marie Kubiak — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 09:06:15 GMT

[quote user="J G Wray"]Any adjustments made might relate to fatigue, discomfort or pain, idiosyncracies of that expectant mother, rather than the generality of the working environment.[/quote]

Not quite- although most risks should be managed in a well-organised practice there are some infectious risks that do not apply to non-pregnant/immunocompetent staff. I doubt many practices reject seeing parrots/pigeons based on risk assessments or insist on gloves being worn in rabbit/cat consults as a matter of course but it is good practice for expectant mothers to do so. Not because of female 'idiosyncrasies' but because there is a heightened risk of infection with potentially catastrophic outcome.

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

J G Wray — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 22:33:27 GMT

There is a school of thought which goes like this:

There is a time before your employee know they are an exepectant mother. If, as an employer, you have run risk assessments and developed safe working practices then there is no adjustment to working practice necessary once the employee is an expectant mother, because you have made work as safe as it is possible to be, even when the employee isn't aware of being An expectant mother. Any adjustments made might relate to fatigue, discomfort or pain, idiosyncracies of that expectant mother, rather than the generality of the working environment.

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

Kate Richardson — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 22:05:18 GMT

[quote user="An On MRCVS"]My last concern is that of working hours.I am full time and work on call. We tend to run a very busy on call with me regularly being at work for 14hrs at a time on weekend days, often much longer. Although I would be fit and well enough to continue on call work, having had a previous miscarriage , I would quite like to limit the number of hours I could work at a time to reduce psychological stress, perhaps 12 hours ....but how would that ever be practical?[/quote]

This is perhaps the most important concern. 14 hours in one stretch is more than enough for anyone, let alone when you are pregnant, its the physical stress as well as the pyschological stress. If you are happy to continue out of hours work, then I would place emphasis on this as having you on the OOH rota will please the boss, but say you would like an early finish, or to spread your out of hours out so you do a night on call preceeded by a day off or a half day and followed by a day/morning off. See if you can split your weekends up. It does require flexibility on your colleagues part, but you may find that it actually suits some of them to do the same. Covering the out of hours work and spreading the load amongst colleagues must be one of the most difficult parts of doing the rota ( I am not a boss, but have participated in an on call rota for 20 years) and I personally think that the days of working all day followed by a night on call and a full day working the next day should be put into Room 101 but sadly it still continues in many practices from what I have heard.

The hours you work are as important when pregnant as the things you do whilst at work. I was lucky and felt very well throughout my entire pregnancy, but there was a period early on in my pregnancy (new job, terrible decision and another story!) where I experienced a lot of work stress and anxiety and I just said no, not doing it. My baby was far more important than any job. So don't be afraid to say no. There is always work out there, there aren't always more babies. If you don't feel comfortable with something, say so. You may have reasonable cause for concern, you may not, but if it causes you stress you need to discuss it. Don't feel pressured to do anything you are not comfortable with no matter how busy the practice is or how much you don't want to let people down. That is not your problem if you are not the boss. (Apologies to all bosses out there, but it's the reality) You have to put yourself in number 1 position right now and through out your pregnancy.

Hope all is going well so far

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

Jill Butterworth — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 21:10:47 GMT

You can avoid those tricky induction moments by placing a catheter in every animal and having a supplementary syringe of propofol.

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

emma o'connor — Tue, 23 May 2017 09:20:59 GMT

Congratulations. When I was pregnant I had regular meetings with my line manager to look at health and safety and what I felt happy doing at that time. As my pregnancy progressed we adapted accordingly. I felt happy with radiography as long as I wasn't holding any animals, Dentals again were fine with masks and we had active scavanging across the practice. No inhalational anaesthesia from a mask (lucky for me there were always other people on hand to take over if required). No handling hormonal drugs, and I wore gloves when dispensing tablets etc. During the later stages no large or boistrous dogs were booked in for consults, and once my bump got too big to reach the animal on the table I had to stop operating!! I did a full time job including on call up until 30 weeks, then stopped the on call. I used annual leave to drop to a four day week for the last 5 weeks before going on maternity leave around 37 weeks. Be guided by how you feel physically and emotionally and have regular meetings with your bosses to make them aware of how you are coping would be my advice.

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

CatherineThomas — Sun, 21 May 2017 13:54:31 GMT

Congratulations! I understand completely those feelings and thoughts of it will happen again, which do reduce the further along you get but never go away. I know some vets who have stopped going into theatre and recovery areas and stopped doing xrays. But I didn't feel it was reasonable for me to do that when there were reasonable safety precautions in place. But I did stop doing dentals for the reasons above but also for the stress/discomfort if it turned into one of those awful dentals with multiple difficult extractions which wouldn't be fun if already feeling tired and sick. I wouldn't hold things for xray anyway, avoiding chemo wasn't a problem. I asked colleagues to do appointments needing hormone injections or asked a nurse to give the injections. Nurses/other vets/receptionists/owners were always happy to help lifting large dogs.

The most important thing is to get the receptionists to understand what you can/can't/would rather not do so that they can book appropriately. Things like dentals and routine ops on large breed dogs can easily be booked for days when you aren't the only vet there if the receptionists are on board.

The worst bit for me was the sickness and tiredness particularly at the start. We have a bedroom upstairs in the practice so I used to often go up there in my lunch break to have a quick power nap to get me through to the end of the day. I also had a stool in theatre so I could operate sitting down, particularly towards the end.

For the long days on call do you have a nurse with you? Could you ask to always be on with the most experienced/efficient nurse so that they might be able to take up a bit of slack so that you can have a decent break in the middle of the day?

I stopped doing on call at about 30 weeks but carried on day time work until about 35 weeks. By 35 weeks I was finding it quite difficult to get up and down to the floor to examine the larger dogs.

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

Nicola Cole — Sat, 20 May 2017 22:10:53 GMT

My general feeling on it is that if health and safety things are up to scratch then there shouldn't be much you have to change.

-I would personally avoid hormone injections (alizin, estrumate etc)-usually easy enough as a nurse can give under your instruction.

-Also I would avoid chemotherapy (injections and handling tablets).

-Radiography-no holding for conscious radiographs.

-Anaesthesia-would avoid mask induction/mask maintenance and recovery room. I would have no concern over normal intubated anaesthetics and dental procedures (re proximity to mouth) as long as good fitting et tube and that's not a general smell of iso in theatre!

-As regards the long weekend shifts:

Thats really a discussion between you and your employers. I don't know how far along you are as regards to knowing whether morning (all day!) sickness is going to be an issue yet? In general if not much affected by it then can often work normally in terms of hours, then depending on how going getting towards when going on maternity leave then some will drop the out of hours. If you're not coping with current hours then you need to inform your employer.

So usually needs have a degree of flexibility.-probably not very helpful but really depends on how coping!

Congratilations and try and relax-the less stressed you are the better.

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

Ceri Gruffudd Jones — Sat, 20 May 2017 22:08:50 GMT

Congratulations! I've been in your position, pregnant following miscarriage so know just how scary it is.

I carried on as normal as much as possible. Sounds like you're pretty aware of the inhalation risks and, as Joyce said, so long as you are careful with cuffing tubes, checking your passive scavengers and maybe opening a window, should be pretty safe. Ketamine or diazepam can be good options when after a bucket of propofol hasn't worked if you reslly wish to avoid masking.

I too was not especially concerned about x-ray, so long as procedures are followed.

Not just the obvious repro hormones to watch out for - pred, felimazole / vidalta and furosemide also have care in pregnancy alerts on them. I ended up wearing gloves for all tablets and many injections.

Might be worth getting tested for toxoplasma. I was stunned to be seronegative despite handling many confirmed toxo sheep abortions. Not worth panicking unduly over - oocytes take 5d exposed to oxygen to sporulate and become infective so gardening higher risk than handling cats but I wore gloves when faced with a particularly grubby specimen.

Fatigue and physically struggling to move in the ways I used to were my main problems. Thankfully my colleagues were very supportive and, once it became visible, so were clients - lifting dogs etc. more than usual. I did full on call until about 7 months then started reducing it. Generally had husband or a colleague loosely available to come and help do the heavy lifting if I needed it. I did a GDV / splenectomy OOH at about 7.5 months and had to hand over to a colleague half way through as I was getting quite wobbly (luckily we have either a vet or nurse on second on call so in the later stages of preg juggled to rota to give me more vet backup).

Sorry, no documentation for you. BVA might be useful source?

Best of luck!

RE: Health and safety during pregnancy

Joyce Whitehead — Sat, 20 May 2017 20:32:39 GMT

Firstly, many congratulations, and I hope you have a healthy and happy pregnancy. Try to enjoy it, hard though that is.

We have had a succession of pregnancies at our practice, 4 babies in 4 years (not all the same staff members!). The staff have varied in their comfidence in continuing to work, but our two vets both continued on call (including equine) right up to starting maternity leave at around 8 months. We have active scavenging for all but dentals, and are very particular about weighing our absorbent passive scavengers to ensure they are still safe. For the occasional mask/small furry box induction we either used another vet, or a nurse and waited till the room was safe before the pregnant staff member entering. Remember also that the post op recovery area is a place to avoid due to expired gases.

Equally radiography, as you say practiced safely you should be fine. For weekends it is more tricky. As your practice is presumably recruiting, can they change the rota about a bit to allow you to reduce your on call hours a bit? Worth asking I would think.

Finally to sound like a dinovet, I worked and operated through both my pregnancies with old fashioned halothane and very litttle scavenging, and both of them were very strapping healthy babies. And remember to avoid touching hormone drugs too!