To protect ourselves from MRSA nurses and anyone that interacts with the patient should be using contact precautions. This means we should be gowning up, wearing gloves, and wearing mouth or eye protection when necessary. Even though we have gloves on nurses should be washing their hands thoroughly after all care with the affected patient. Also, we need to make sure if any equipment is to be returned to the unit to use on others that it is cleaned with bleach wipes to clear it of any contaminants. External factors of this standard are those that come from outside agencies. Some examples of those would be the Joint Commission, CDC, HIPPA, or the ANA. Internal standards are those that come from within the hospital like the policies and procedures …show more content…
This means the staff were following contact precautions, which is great. The problem I see with this is the isolation cart is far away from the patient’s room. This most likely means that the PPE was carried through the hallway. This means the contaminates on the PPE were exposed to really anyone that may have been using the hallway for access. Another issue is the patient’s family members were never communicated with about wearing PPE to protect themselves. This should have been discussed before they were ever allowed in the room. Luckily, the nurse later notified them and they complied with the precautions without any hesitation. As a nurse I would have first talked to the patient and family about the MRSA diagnosis first. Then I would educate them about MRSA to better understand what the family does and does not know about the issue. Next, I would make sure all the staff on the floor knew that my patient has MRSA and that they need to take precautions always. Lastly, I would have all isolation gowns be thrown away in the patient’s room. This way it is contained to the room and there is a decreased chance the MRSA can be
Health care providers and visitors are required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) and follow strict hand hygiene procedures. Contaminated rooms, surfaces, and laundry items are properly disinfected to prevent the spread of MRSA. In addition to policy and procedures, patient teaching is also helpful for preventing exposure and spread of MRSA. As aforementioned earlier, hand hygiene is key to prevent exposer or transmission of the bacteria. To properly wash your hand effectively, first scrub hands rapidly for at least 15 seconds. Next, use a disposable towel to dry them and another towel to turn off the faucet. In addition, hand sanitizer that contains 62 percent or more of alcohol may be an adequate substitute when the individual does not have access to soap and water (Mayo Clinic Staff,
In all honesty, I would disregard what the on-site assistants were telling me. I am not sure what time would permit, so I would see the patient and treat that person just like every other patient that walks through that door. If the on-site assistants had an issue with it, I would just explain to them my reasoning and clarify to them that standard precautions are meant to treat all patients as potentially infectious. We do not need to take any further steps to ensure our safety while treating this patient. This patient is a human being, not an
Protecting the patient from illness and infection can by control if the staff knows the infections control procedures (wearing glows, protective clothing, washing the hands before and after a contact with a patient.
William Johnson is a 65-year-old male that was readmitted to Holy Cross after spending 6 days in a skilled nursing facility. The client was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of influenza. The sign on the door of the client’s room says droplet precautions. You observe the staff going in and out of the patient’s room without donning the appropriate PPE. You stop at the door to don your PPE before entering the patient’s room and a hospital employee states that the client is no long on precautions but the signs have not been removed from the door. What do you do?
All areas that are being used for healthcare activities should be cleaned with either disinfectant wipes each morning and in between patients/procedures. Equipment should be all new out of the packets and clean. For things more major such as vasectomy’s, minor surgery or family planning clinics, areas should be cleaned everywhere with a disinfectant fluid and also with wipes, gloves should always be worn as well as other PPE such as aprons and hats. All equipment should be new from the packet and only touched by the person who is using
Implementation of patient care practices for infection control is the role of the nursing staff. Nurses are responsible for maintaining hygiene, consistent with hospital policies and good nursing practice on the ward and monitoring aseptic techniques, including hand-washing and use of isolation. It is also in their scope of practice to promptly report to the attending physician any evidence of infection in patients under the nurse’s care and initiating patient isolation and ordering culture specimens from any patient showing signs of a communicable disease, when the physician is not immediately available. Limiting patient exposure to infections from visitors, hospital staff, other patients, or equipment used for diagnosis or treatment and maintaining
Put used gloves and gown in to yellow infectious waste bin, which should be either just inside the room or outside the door before leaving the room.
On one of the placement on the ward, the student nurse was assigned to assist a patient. Alfred is a 65 years old man and was admitted with diarrhoea and generally unwell to the hospital. In the process of his admission he was isolated in a side room to prevent and reduce any risk of spreading infection. Alfred was a barrier nursed because he had clostridium difficile. He was isolated to lessen the hazard of spread of infections to other patients, visitors, and
They are responsible for what seems like everyone and everything. However, nurses have all the tools they need to be effective and safe nurses early on. The standards of precautions are one of those tools nurses are taught that aids them in protecting every patient they care for, including him or herself. Regardless of the patient’s health status, the nurse should use their better judgment when implementing care. In order to prevent interruption in the chain of infection, nurses are to adhere to the standards of precautions by thinking critically when providing patient care. No matter how presumably capable or experience a colleague may be, evidence-based practice proves that standard precautions are greatly impacting the nursing field. Nurses need to stick to their guns and not compromise their beliefs for fear of being the odd man out. The more the nurse implements those practices in their everyday routine the more it will become second nature. By gaining knowledge of the importance of standard precautions, the nurse will in turn become more compliant and adherent, and be better suited to provide effective quality care to all
The employee has to wear PPE at all times when carrying out any personal care to help prevent any cross infection and to help prevent any.
As a leader in health care, it is important that employees have the proper education and training for compliance with infection control. An infection control practitioner should be assigned surveillance of infections, calculate infection rates, and report these numbers to the appropriate personnel. Clinical nurses, such as nurses, should have periodic evaluations to ensure they are practicing patient safety. There are many other key factors that should be implemented in health care facilities to improve infection control. First is hand hygiene; there could be random observers periodically monitoring a certain floor or department for hand sanitation practices. Secondly, is the health care environment. This includes, making sure employees are sanitizing surfaces and equipment, educating visitors and families on infection control measures, and properly using personal protective equipment. Improper use, wear, and removal of personal protective equipment can cause serious health consequences to the worker and the patients, which means employees need be continuously trained and educated on this equipment.
Clinical judgment is the clinical reasoning, which includes clinical decision-making, critical thinking, and a global grasp of the situation, coupled with nursing skills acquired through a process of integrating formal and informal experiential knowledge and evidence- based guidelines (AACN, n.d.). In the case of F.S., he was on isolation precautions due to his infection. The results from the cultures had yet to return, therefore the infection was not identified at that current moment. The registered nurse that was assigned to F.S. went into the room several times without wearing proper protective personal equipment. This nurse stated that if she wasn’t touching the site, she was not at risk. This was a bad clinical judgment. Unfortunately, this was not the first time this student nurse witnessed the lack of use of the personal protective equipment. What most nurses don’t seem to understand is that the risk of infection is not only towards the patient but towards the nurse as well as everyone the nurse encounters. Contact precautions were researched and found to be associated with activities likely to reduce transmission of resistant pathogens, such as fewer visits and better hand hygiene at the exit while exposing patients on contact precautions to less healthcare worker contact, less visitor contact, and potentially other unintended outcomes (Morgan et al, 2013). Although it can be depressive for the patient to become isolated due to an infection, this
Have you ever had a colonoscopy or endoscopy – where they take a camera and look through your mouth down into your stomach; or a camera that goes in your rectum that looks through your bowel and intestines?
This paragraph explains ways to prevent infections contracted from hospitals. The number one way to lower the spread of infections contracted through a hospital is correct sanitation customs. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a federal government agency has come up with guidelines in order to safeguard against the expansion of infections and diseases for patients and the workers (Hedman, 2010). It is mandatory for administrators of hospitals to write a disclosure policy to protect the workers from infections like Hepatitis B and other infections and bad bacteria. Minimizing infections that the workers have can aid in stopping the spread of
1. Prepare a brief situational analysis of LMF for Dr. Townsend, identifying at least 3 internal issues and 3 external issue/competitive issues that are affecting LMF.