Today I administered the vaccine to a patient and the patient afterwards. I had my gloves on and applied pressure and wiped the area clean for the patient. 

When I was removed my gloves and grabbed the paperwork documenting which arm I administered the vaccine on, I realized there was blood on the paper. I checked my hands and clothes to make sure I didn't have any blood on me and didn't see any.

Logically, I think I am okay, but just want a little piece of my mind.

My questions are:

1. The man was a white male in his late 50s, so statistically he probably doesn't have HIV, correct?

2. I'm worried that I might have came in contact with his blood when I was taking my gloves off and I have a pretty deep crack/cut on the knuckle of my thumb and I'm afraid that blood could have got in that. If he did have HIV, does this raise concern?

3. Is it true that HIV doesn't live outside of the body for very long? If so if any blood came into contact with my cut on my knuckle, would the blood still be infectious?

4. Does the blood on the paper raise any concern, like if I had touched it with my bare hand?

Please let me know if I need to clarify anything, and thank you for this service! Hope you are staying safe!

The bottom line is that you needn't be at all worried about HIV (or any other blood borne infectsion) in this situation. Perhaps the statistic that will most help is that no health care worker has ever been known to be infected with HIV in the course of patient care unless they were obviously injured with a blood-contaminated instrument while providing care. And I don't mean subtle, possible events like you describe:  every case had an obvious deep needle stick, a slash with a bloody scalpel, or similar events. Even before current practices to prevent blood and body fluid exposure -- gloving for patient contact that might involve exposure -- there wee no known cases of HIV from simple skin contact with infected blood.

To your specific questions:

1) Correct:  such a person is statistically very unlikely to have HIV.

2) Even if he had HIV and you had a bit of blood exposure to the crack/cut on your knuckle, there would have been little or no risk that you would be infected.

3) Wrong question. It doesn't matter whether or for how long HIV lives outside the body, when blood dries, etc. The fact is that exposure to blood or body fluids in the environment has never been known to result in HIV infection. The biological reasons don't matter. Most likely the fragility of HIV -- rapidly becoming non-infectious with drying or exposure to air -- is among the biological reasons. But whatever the biology of it, no such exposure ever result in HIV infetction.

4) No worries. Exposure of intact skin to HIV is risk free.

Thanks again for your service. Please keep it up -- and don't worry about HIV in this setting. There has never been a health worker who acquired HIV while providing this sort of care.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD