Universal precautions. When I say that phrase, what enters your mind? If you work in human services at all, you probably think of hand washing and non-latex gloves at the very least. Almost everyone has some idea what the phrase means.
What is interesting is it has a double meaning to me. Any locked facility is a Petri dish of germs and disease. MRSA, Hepatitis, and various other really scary things all exist in abundance on every doorknob, wall, bed, desk, table, in essence every surface that can be found. To deny, and some do exactly, doesn’t change that fact. I wash my hands all the time. Some shifts I wash my hands so often that I am afraid my knuckles are going to start bleeding. This is a reality of working inside a locked facility. It is a danger that is there all the time. In truth, many of the same diseases are all around you too. They are at the grocery story and on the money you handle but the people you are around are probably not going to try and intentionally spit on you or inflict you with a cut.
The difference between where I work and where you work though is that where I work universal precautions also have another meaning. Not everyone follows them, but there are a group of us that do. Some call it having boundaries, and some call it crazy but many of us do not let the residents know anything about our personal lives. Not our real last name, not our spouses name, how many children we really have. NOTHING. For me personally, the residents think my wife was an officer in the Marine Corps. They think I have 9 children and that my oldest is a police sniper.
Some of my colleagues give all of this information out to the residents. They allow them to borrow their MP3 players and computers and see pictures of their families.
The obvious question I am asked is, “Why not? Why not let them know who are you?” Well, there is still a chance that they will find out but many of these kids are angry, and violent. Not all of them, but a majority of them are. Better than half of my job is getting them to do things they don’t want to do and telling them no. What are the chances that they could fixate on me and focus their anger on me? In my time at the hospital I’ve seen residents come and go. Some have stayed for a few months; others have been there for years. The odds say that at least one of them could fixate on me and decide that I am to blame for all of his or her troubles. That individual could decide to do harm to my family or me so I use Universal Precautions both against germs and potentially angry residents. To me that just makes good sense and is healthy boundaries.
