Hepatitis B Vaccine Documentation: Fill & Download for Free

Annual tests for Hepatitis B immunity are unnecessary in the absence of ongoing high risk of exposure. I could imagine that someone whose spouse has Hepatitis B or a person who works with the virus in a laboratory might need frequent tests to make sure that he or she remains immune. Even then, yearly tests would be excessive if such a high titer of antibody were documented.If you are likely to have exposure to Hepatitis B, it could be useful to get one more test to see if your immunity has remained high.

Accordingly to the CDC:Why should an infant receive hepatitis B vaccine at birth before hospital discharge, even if the mother is negative for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg)?The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends that all infants receive hepatitis B vaccine at birth, regardless of the infection status of the mother. Infants born to HBV-infected mothers require hepatitis B vaccine and hepatitis B immune globulin (HBIG) within 12 hours of birth to protect them from infection. However, because errors or delays in testing, reporting, and documenting maternal HBsAg status can and do occur, administering the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine soon after birth to all infants acts as a safety net, reducing the risk for perinatal infection when maternal HBsAg status is either unknown or incorrectly documented at delivery. Also, initiating the hepatitis B vaccine series at birth has been shown to increase a child’s likelihood of completing the vaccine series on schedule.Hepatitis B Questions and Answers for Health Professionals

When I was in college, I volunteered to be a secondary assistant. I was given a little bit of training, (and a hepatitis B vaccine series), and I was able to scrub into surgeries and often help hold retractors or otherwise observe. Call around to your largest hospital in the area (The one known for trauma is your best bet) and see what kind of volunteer opportunities are available.I work at a community hospital, and the local high school has a program with my hospital that allows high school students to observe surgeries. I frequently have high school students rotating through my OR.If your hospital does not have a similar program, they may be willing to create an opportunity for you if you demonstrate that you are motivated. The biggest concerns for them are patient privacy (you will have to be taught about HIPAA and probably sign some documents to the effect that you will not share private patient information) and you need to learn some basic information about sterile technique and sterile field so that you do not contaminate the surgery. I imagine there's also a liability component on the side of the hospital (what if you were stuck with a needle during an operation on a hepatitis C patient?), and if they do you not have some mechanism in place to protect themselves they may not be willing to work with you.