Would you fire her for having *any* other disease?

mrsconn23

Dear Prudence,
My wife and I have a wonderful nanny who has taken excellent care of our two young children for the last year. She’s fun, smart, creative, dependable, flexible with our schedules and our kids love her. She recently called out sick for three days, the first time she ever missed work. When she returned, she told us that she’s been HIV positive for about five years and was addressing a complication due to an otherwise minor viral infection. Our initial reaction (in retrospect, an ignorant and emotional one) was that we should let her go. We were concerned about the risk of infecting our children and angry that she hadn’t told us before we hired her and our children developed an emotional bond. We have discussed with our pediatrician and are moving in the direction of keeping her. Is this wise? Are there risks? If so, how can we mitigate them? Should she wear gloves when she changes our 1-year-old’s diapers?

—Nervous Parents

lnixon8

I like that they have discussed it with the pediatrician but are asking Prudie if there are risks

Heffalump

mrs.conn23 said:

Should she wear gloves when she changes our 1-year-old’s diapers?

OTOH, I'm not sure how they think the 1 y.o. would contract HIV from having her diaper changed, but on the other, everyone wears gloves at DC when they're changing diapers (or cleaning a scraped knee, or whatever) and it's NBD.  So if it would make them feel better, why not, but it also doesn't seem necessary just because of her HIV status.

banana468

lnixon8 said:

I like that they have discussed it with the pediatrician but are asking Prudie if there are risks

Tune in next week when Prudie has a plan to counter terrorism. 

scrunchythief

Heffalump said:

mrs.conn23 said:

Should she wear gloves when she changes our 1-year-old’s diapers?

OTOH, I'm not sure how they think the 1 y.o. would contract HIV from having her diaper changed, but on the other, everyone wears gloves at DC when they're changing diapers (or cleaning a scraped knee, or whatever) and it's NBD.  So if it would make them feel better, why not, but it also doesn't seem necessary just because of her HIV status.

The only way I could think of is if the child had diaper rash with a split/opening of some sort at the same time as the nanny having a small cut on her hand.  But gloves when there's a chance of contact with bodily fluids is a good idea period, not just with this one case.

Heffalump

scrunchythief said:

Heffalump said:

mrs.conn23 said:

Should she wear gloves when she changes our 1-year-old’s diapers?

OTOH, I'm not sure how they think the 1 y.o. would contract HIV from having her diaper changed, but on the other, everyone wears gloves at DC when they're changing diapers (or cleaning a scraped knee, or whatever) and it's NBD.  So if it would make them feel better, why not, but it also doesn't seem necessary just because of her HIV status.

The only way I could think of is if the child had diaper rash with a split/opening of some sort at the same time as the nanny having a small cut on her hand.  But gloves when there's a chance of contact with bodily fluids is a good idea period, not just with this one case.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure daycare does it for infection control more than anything. There were days when I would have worn a hazmat suit if I'd had one handy.

MesmrEwe

Wait - she's NOT wearing gloves when changing a kid who isn't her own's diaper - EWWWWWWW!!!   Heck, DH still gloves up when DS needs help in the bathroom dept.