Resource Articles

When patients are treated with radioactive iodine, their blood and body fluids such as urine and vomit can contain the radioactive drug. Caregivers should understand the risks of exposure. There are two different types of radiation risks: Thyroid exposure: Having the radioactive iodine absorbed by your thyroid gland. External beam radiation: Getting radiation exposure from the contaminated body fluids, just like you would from an X-ray. Preventing thyroid exposure

If your employee is out more than 3 consecutive days, or plans to be out that long, notify the employee that the condition might qualify for FMLA. The FMLA request and approval process includes medical certification in which the treating provider provides appropriate documentation to HR of the individual's severity of illness. Other than FMLA documentation, please do not request doctor's notes for sick time use. A doctor's note is not required for an employee to use sick time and will not change whether the absence counts as an occurrence.

​Compliance with all applicable Vanderbilt Occupational Health medical surveillance and fitness for duty programs is required and compliance status is automatically imported into the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Performance Evaluation System (VPES).

​Chickenpox is normally a fairly mild childhood illness caused by the varicella virus. Humans are the only source of infection for this highly contagious virus. Humans are infected by person to person transmission when virus comes in contact with upper respiratory tract or eyes and by contact with lesion drainage from someone with chickenpox.

Please note: this process only applies for supervisors who need to view the compliance of their staff. If you're looking for your own personal compliance record, please visit the Health & Wellness Information Portal. Supervisors can monitor compliance with the programs below using the VUMC Immunization Compliance Report in Tableau.

Occupational Health offers many programs and resources for employees to have the opportunity to complete their annual and new hire TB skin test requirements, including departmental TB Designees and an online submission survey to submit TB reads. Corrected spelling of opportunities.

A parasite called Toxoplasma gondii causes a disease known as toxoplasmosis. Most adults have already had toxoplasmosis; toxoplasmosis shows few or no symptoms 90% of the time. However, pregnant women and individuals with weakened immune systems should be cautious.

Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne disease which can be detected with skin testing.

Because macaques can carry a virus that is deadly to humans, workers need to know how to reduce their risk of exposure as well as what to do if they get exposed.

Typically, there is no serious complication for a pregnant woman or her baby from exposure to a person with Parvovirus B19, or "Fifth" disease. About 50% of women are already immune to Parvovirus B19, so these women and their babies are protected from infection and illness. Even if a woman is susceptible and gets infected with Parvovirus B19, she usually experiences only a mild illness. Likewise, her unborn baby usually does not have any problems attributable to a Parvovirus B19 infection.