Re: Nurses who Breast Feed

[Karin Gordon <kgordon@cc.UManitoba.CA>]

Pauline, 

I assume the ward staff caring for the I-131 therapy patients wear TLDs to measure their 
external radiation dose.  Do the nurses have access (on the ward) to a contamination 
detector to monitor their hands after being in the patients room? I would consider 
this the first step in empowering nursing staff concerned about possible 
contamination.  Also, do you perform bioassays on ward staff who have been in contact 
with these patients? If you have history of negative skin/clothing contamination and 
bioassay results on such workers, you are in a far better position to tell them that 
there should be no concern with respect to transferring radioactive 
contamination to their babies via breast-feeding. Certainly a fraction of any 
ingested/inhaled radioiodine will show up in the nurses thyroid gland at the end of her 
shift before she goes home.  

We make bioassay available to all nursing staff who wish - and after half-a dozen 
negative measurements, they are usually reassured.



Karin   



Jones, Pauline wrote:
> 
> Had a question posed this morning by a pregnant nurse with respect to
> Iodine-131 ablation therapy patients generally receiving >100 mCi. We
> do not allow pregnant nurses to attend these patients , however she
> wondered about attending them when breast feeding. In Nova Scotia
> female workers generally take 6 months maternity leave so this has
> not been an issue. This nurse (now in her 5th pregnancy) breast feeds
> for two years. I don't see any problem as long as she follows good
> universal precautions, but I would like to get some feedback from
> other health care institutions. Could be she wants an easy out from
> dealing with these patients!!!
> 
> Pauline Jones
> pjones@kilcom1.ucis.dal.ca