"Open Day" is the term we use around here for a community wide event that allows people to get to know what Living Hope does in their own communities. We have at least one general open day per year in each community, and then special interest open days in between. The yearly Open Day includes a comprehensive health check as well as games, raffles, food, music and opportunities to be prayed for. This is a great way for people that don't have routine access to medical care to get a yearly check-up and be referred for follow up as necessary. These Open Days are usually very well attended and we enjoy seeing everyone come out for them!
This year in the Ocean View township, we offered free eye screening, health screening, blood pressure checks, blood sugar testing, and HIV testing. Lots of great nursing things for me to do, including doing finger pricking and blood sampling for HIV testing.
While HIV testing is a vital part of what we do, I'm sure you can imagine that this is not everyone's favorite job duty. Not everyone, including trained and hired medical professionals, are eager to put themselves in close proximity to someone with HIV due to the risk of accidental exposure, albeit an extremely low risk. There have been many times that the assigned nurse hasn't even bothered to show up on the day that we do the testing just to get out of having to do that job. Obviously, that attitude might not be the right attitude, but at some point we all have been guilty of looking out for ourselves over others, so I'm learning not to throw stones. Sometimes nursing is gross. And hard. And messy. And maybe even dangerous. And sometimes we do cringe internally or hold back that feeling in our stomach, but that's what we are called to do as nurses, and even more than that, as Christians! (I'm sure leprosy wasn't any more popular of an area of care back in Jesus' day either!) So all of that to say, I didn't mind when I was assigned to do the finger pricks for HIV testing and I actually enjoyed getting to spend that time with the clients. What I enjoyed about cancer care in my previous job, was making scary things less scary, and I found that same enjoyment in counseling and testing clients for HIV. It was a great opportunity for me to demonstrate equality in the way I treat patients with kindness without the shame or stigma that usually comes along with HIV testing.
In general, I found most people to be way more laid back than I had been prepped for regarding the entire testing process. Most people were quite calm and prepared for their testing, which to me, is a sign that HIV testing is becoming more widely accepted. I was so proud to see several of the local lay leaders of the community publicly step forward to be tested, setting the good example for others, and several of our LH staff as well! I'm also thrilled to report that all of the people tested that day were HIV negative, which is great news!
In the interest of keeping it real around here and passing on valuable insights for those that might follow in my footsteps, we only had one small incident occur during a client's test. One of the pipettes malfunctioned during testing, and I got a small amount of blood splashed into my eye... BUT thankfully, the client was HIV negative and I managed to keep my cool despite freaking out on the inside. We of course immediately washed my eye out, reported the malfunction to the manufacturer, and I now know exactly how to take better precautions for the next time which is a very valuable lesson. (ie) Wear goggles and a mask always!
(By the way, just so you don't freak out, the chances of contracting HIV from a positive splash in the eye with a large amount of blood is less than 0.1% and I only had a very tiny amount of negative blood, so not to worry! If the client had been positive I could have taken prophylactic treatment, so there is much to be grateful for.)
