Pregnant practice nurse covid 19

[Sallierosie]

I am a practice nurse who is around 24 weeks pregnant. I have been told that from 28 weeks I can still be patient facing to ‘certain’ patients and that I would still be expected to come into work.

All the advice I have seen has been that healthcare workers should work from home at 28 weeks due to the risks from covid in third trimester!

I am still 4 weeks away from 28 weeks and with lockdowns easing I am anticipating that the guidance might be different then anyway. I just wondered if anyone else has any experience working in GP practice with this?

It’s difficult sometimes because we are not the ‘nhs’ so it seems they make their own rules up. Just interested to see if any other healthcare workers in a similar situation having to fight their own corner!

“If your employer hasn’t carried out a pregnancy risk assessment you can use this letter to request an assessment. If after receiving the letter the situation is not resolved, please consider raising your concerns and contact RCN Direct on 0330 818 2267 for support.
Your employer should take steps to reduce the risk of harm to you and your unborn child and follow government guidelines. If you are concerned with the results of the risk assessment, you should escalate to your Occupational Health Department, your RCN workplace representative, or contact RCN Direct for advice. Your midwife or GP may also be able to support you.”
www.rcn.org.uk/get-help/rcn-advice/covid-19-and-individual-risk-assessments

I'm a paramedic in a GP surgery. I stopped seeing potential covid patients as soon as I was pregnant but otherwise carried on as normal until 28 weeks when I was told I had to be non patient facing (I stopped going on home visits at 24 weeks when I accidentally went to a covid positive patient whose wife was blissfully unaware how unwell he was and thought it was Parkinson's related, whoops) I was allowed to stay at work and do telephone triage from my clinic room and I've been working from home a bit too but not allowed to see patients. My work referred me to our occy health department (because they panicked and tried to make me go home 100% of the time from 28 weeks and I didn't want to) and the risk assessment was basically that I could stay as long as it was a "covid secure" area so non patient facing, social distancing from colleagues, screens where able etc etc

@Hardertobreathe thankyou for that information, I had a risk assessment around 10 weeks but nothing since and have been told I will have another at 28 weeks. My work said as staff that were previously sheilded are now able to work that this applies to pregnant employees also.

@LemonRizzle that’s nice to hear that your work wanted to keep you safe even if you wanted to continue to attend work! I’m just sad my work don’t feel the same need to protect their staff!

@Sallierosie everything I've read about current guidelines for pregnant healthcare workers still says 28 weeks onwards should adhere to "stringent social distancing". That rainbird assessment thing they made everyone do (might be a local thing, was the covid risk assessment based on ethnicity, age, weight, comorbidities) automatically puts you as high risk from 28 weeks regardless of any other answer. I would ask to be referred to your occy health nurse for review, mine was done by telephone but took a couple of weeks to sort so worth asking now. I can't see that it's safe to see patients and is understandably a worry for you. It's a sad state of affairs but I've had colleagues lie about symptoms, come to work and test positive a few days later and you have no way of proving if a patient is telling the truth about symptoms when they're desperate to get to the surgery for a blood test or similar

@LemonRizzle yes my understanding is 28 weeks you should social distance which is impossible in our jobs! I still see upwards of 20 patients a day although I’m in ppe there is no social distancing happening! Even around the building I work in it’s hard to social distance I’m forever passing people in the corridor or opening doors multiple people use!

I have already caught covid once from work from a patient and so know the risks! Hopefully with the vaccinations the risk of this will become less but there is no proper data on this yet!

@Sallierosie that’s so disappointing. The guidance for people shielding is separate to the document/ guidance for pregnant women. I would imagine the only reason shielding ended was because those people are now vaccinated which is not the case for pregnant women.