Tuberculin Sensitivity and Tuberculosis in Nursing and Medical Students

¹ The Student Health Service, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

In the 25 year period from 1934 to 1959, 2,497 medical students and 1,223 nursing students have been adequately studied while in school. Tuberculin records of an additional 148 nursing students were lost, but all had adequate x-ray film study.

The percentage of tuberculin reactors at matriculation and graduation has decreased greatly during this period. The lowest percentages of reactors have occurred since 1949 for nursing students, and since 1950 for medical students, indicating less risk of infection in the study of nursing and medicine than in previous years.

Seventeen cases of clinically significant tuberculosis have developed in medical students while in school, 16 of them before June, 1950, and one in 1953.

Nine cases have occurred in nursing students, all prior to 1949.

This recent low morbidity has occurred without the use of BCG vaccination. It is the result of education, early diagnosis and treatment, improved methods of treatment, and management of tuberculosis as a contagious disease.

Tuberculin testing increases in importance as the number of infected individuals decreases.

Nursing and medical students still run a greater risk of tuberculous infection than other student populations and continued vigilance is still necessary.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: The tuberculosis control programs for the Schools of Nursing and Medicine were brought into being by T. Nelson Carey, M.D., who was Director of both health services in 1934.

The writer gratefully acknowledges the opportunity to study the health records of the nursing students granted by Wilfred H. Townshend, M.D., Director of the Student Nurse Health Service, and Dean Florence M. Gipe, School of Nursing.