It’s a risk. It’s horrible. Once in internship I got splashed in the eye (I think) with a droplet of blood from an HIV positive patient when the resident threw a bloody sponge at a wastebasket, and it hit the rim of the basket. I worried (and didn’t have unprotected sex) for six months. I knew a resident who had a patient with some horrible form of viral encephalitis cough and sputter in the resident’s face. She caught the virus, developed encephalitis, spent months in the ICU in a coma. Never fully recovered. And neither of these were intentional!
There have been incidents where crazy patients in ERs attacked physicians and nurses, even murdered them. And still, we keep going back in, out of a sense of commitment to the job.
Most doctors today advise their children not to go into medicine.