Oh my Scabies

Whew! You won’t believe how happy I am that this day is over. It has been such a whirlwind. 

First, one of our patients was diagnosed with Scabies. The worst part was, yesterday this patient was transferred from another ward in the hospital, so we needed to make sure there wasn’t an outbreak. My doctor spent pretty much the whole morning on the phone, contacting all the personnel who have been in contact with the patient since their admission. 

Luckily, I wasn’t one of them. Yesterday evening, when the patient arrived at our ward, my doctor and I headed to examine them. We were on our way to see the patient, but I desperately needed to use the toilet. We agreed that my doctor would see the patient independently, and we would meet after. Once I finished using the bathroom, I found my doctor at a sink at the nurse's station. I asked what was going on. She informed me that while performing the clinical exam, she noticed a rash and suspects the patient has scabies. We knew we needed to call Dermatology for a consultation. Until Dermatology could examine the patient and take a skin scraping for testing, my doctor took all the necessary precautions, including removing her clothing and tying them up in a plastic bag.

Everyone my doctor called today will also have to follow the same protocol.

What is Scabies? Scabies is a highly contagious skin condition caused by Sarcoptes scabiei. Typical symptoms are itchy skin that worsens at night. My skin hasn’t stopped itching since this morning. It must be differentiated from bed bugs and is usually diagnosed by looking at skin scrapings under a microscope. 

As soon as that was under control, we began seeing our patients. That was interrupted very quickly, some of our lab results came back, and several patients could go home. We needed to complete their discharge paperwork, so we sat in the doctor’s office and got to it. Just as we were making some headway, we were needed downstairs to perform a gastroscopy. The procedure went well, and we returned upstairs to try once again to see our patients. But not so fast, more lab results had come back, and a patient had low haemoglobin, so we needed to arrange a blood transfusion. 

Every time we thought we had a second to breathe and catch up with today’s ward round, something else came up. Finally, around mid-afternoon, we got a chance to see the patients. We made our way back to the doctor’s office to write our findings and make orders for tomorrow’s imaging, labs, consults etc.

A little after 6 pm, I asked for us to review a case from last week and after my doctor told me it was okay for me to go home. 

Me somewhere in UZ Leuven.