system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Do doctors and nurses develop stronger immune systems from spending most of their time working in hospitals? Or do they become sick more often than the general population? Are there any other effects on ones health from working in a hospital setting long term?
gpt
It's a combination of things.

1) Vaccinations. Health care workers are always up to date on vaccinations (in theory).

2) Immunity. A lot of diseases (especially some common in kids) are one shot diseases-- you get it and then you're immune. HCWs get these once or twice.

3) Repeated exposure. The more you are exposed to a disease, the more of a response you build to it. It's like getting a booster shot. Whereas someone in the normal population may be exposed to disease x twice in their life, with the second being so long after the first that their immunity is quite weak and they show symptoms, a HCW may be exposed on a monthly basis, and thus strongly fights it off after the first exposure.

That said, there are definitely a lot of older docs in fields like Infectious Disease with chronic, tropical diseases and so on. That's life.

I have not seen any evidence that the immune system itself becomes stronger, in the sense that it can respond to a new threat better. Rather, it's just that the average HCW is seeing the same diseases over and over, and thus has some degree of immunity to them already.