Feeling awful that pregnancy is affecting my ability to do my job well.

[Fedupofplaystation]

I love my job. I do well, always had great reviews and get lots of satisfaction from it.

I am currently 23 weeks pregnant. I have a big bump.

I'm feeling a lot more conscious of my own personal safety at work recently as I feel very protective of my bump.

I often have to examine patients who may be aggressive and in the past have always managed with talking them down, encouragement and have never not been able to perform a proper examination. (Sometimes this requires coming back to it in an hour)

I currently feel like I'm letting my patients down as I am keeping them more at arms length during an examination when there's a chance of being hit/kicked/bitten. This inevitably leads to not as thorough an examination and not as good a rapport between myself and my patient.

I don't know what to do about this. I don't feel that I can talk to my seniors as I work in a male dominated workplace and don't want to be seen as trying to get out of my responsibilities or as playing the 'pregnancy card.'

I am managing to perform examinations but am very inwardly nervous when doing it and they're not up to my usual standard. I obviously want to do the best for the patients.

What does your employer's pregnancy risk assessment say?

Haven't had a risk assessment.

You really need a risk assessment. Get in touch with Occupational Health/HR to arrange this.

We even get them in our offices to check that we are sitting appropriately, so god knows if you are seeing patients who may pose a risk to you, you need one.

It doesn't have to mean that you don't see patients. I worked in a special school for children with severe behavioural difficulties when I was pregnant, there's just things to be aware of/have safety plans for.

You absolutely need a risk assessment, for the benefit of you and your patients.

I can relate to your situation though I work with animals, not people. Found it really stressful worrying about getting injured by the patients but also feeling bad that I really wasn't doing my job properly. It didn't feel right to be leaving the most aggressive patients for my colleagues to deal with, but that's what I did, especially as I got bigger. I think for me the actual risk of being hurt wasn't particularly high but pregnancy hormones can make everything seem more scary and I didn't want to put my baby at risk. You're only pregnant for a relatively short time and it's OK to put yourself and your baby first. You'll be able to resume normal duties if/when you go back after maternity leave.

Is it HR that would be responsible for doing a risk assessment? Our HR are in a different building and don't really seem like they know what goes on 'day-to-day' in our roles. They also never reply to my emails.

I'm fine with most patients, it's just those who've proven to be aggressive that particular day that I'm more wary of than before. In theory, we're not supposed to put ourselves in situations where we're at risk of being hit etc. anyway but the reality is that if you don't, you don't really do your job properly.

What had me in tears was that a colleague (who never seems very present day-to-day) said "Oh, you shouldn't have examined that patient. What if they hit you in the bump and damaged your baby? Imagine how guilty you'd feel." He didn't however offer any solutions as to who should have been examining this patient or what I could have done differently.

Your manager should be first port of call for a risk assessment. There may be a health and safety person who is responsible for actually doing it, or someone from HR, or it might be your manager themselves, but your manager is who you should speak to about it.