Fall Prevention Strategies, Infection Control Measures, And Essay In Healthcare Facility.

Gastroenteritis is a highly contagious viral infection, taking into Mrs Smith’s presentation to Emergency Department answer the following questions.

1). Select 2 key infection control principles need to be applied to Mrs Smith’s care to minimise the transmission of infection to staff and other patients 

2). Provide rationales for their implementation

Using the National Safety and Quality Heath Service Standard (NSQHS) for preventing falls and injury in healthcare setting answer the following question.

1). Discuss the importance of this standard and identify two falls prevention strategies to be implemented

2). Provide rationales for implementation to prevent further injury

Importance of Cleaning and Disinfecting Supplies for Infection Control

A).  

1). Infection control can be considered as one of the key strategies that can be facilitated in order to prevent hospital acquired infections and safeguard the wellbeing and health of the rest of the staff ( Bok & Green, 2012). According to the guidelines of the Centre for disease control, there are various infection control measures that can be employed for preventing the spread of the infection and performing thorough infection risk mitigation in order to save the staff and the other patients residing in the facility ( Key Infection Control Recommendations, 2018). In this case, the patent had been suffering from gastroenteritis, which is a highly contagious condition requiring heavy infection control measures to be taken in order to protect the care providers handling the patient suffering with this particular condition and the patients in the nearby wards. In this case, in order to protect the patients from the infection, contact prevention strategies will be required. The first technique that will be implemented in this case will be the mandatory use of personal protective equipments which is the second element of standard precaution techniques and the second principle will the cleaning and disinfection of the equipment and supplies for the patients ( Mayhall, 2012).

2). There are various reasons that can be discussed as the rationale for the chosen infection control measures. First and foremost, personal protective measure can be defined as the practice of using the protective clothing, helmet, gloves, face shields, goggles, facemasks and/or respirators or other equipments in order to protect the wearer from any injury or the spread of infections. According to the guidelines by Guidelines for the Management of Gastroenteritis Outbreaks in Residential Environments in South Australia, (2018), the use of persona protective equipments can be considered as the first line of defense for the health care providers in order to protect them from any possible onset of infection. When used with respect to the guidelines and accreditations from the WHO, it provides considerable protection from pathogenic contaminants and acts a barrier for all points of transmissions such as skin, mouth, nose, eyes and mucous membrane. According to Barclay et al. (2014), it is very important for diseases like gastroenteritis blocking all the possible transmission routes are extremely important. The personal protective equipment will provide potential to block transmission of contaminants from blood, body fluids, or respiratory secretions. Hence it can act as a key infection control measure for protecting the health care providers from this deadly infection ( Lopman et al., 2012).

The NSQHS Standards for Fall Prevention in Healthcare Facilities

The next chosen infection control measure selected has been a standard precaution principle, the use of cleaning and disinfecting the supplies. It has to be understood in this context that, hospital acquired infection is a very common occurrence and is the reason for a vast majority of secondary exacerbations of the patients while being in the facility. Apart from the transmission by the hands of the health care providers another very common type of transmission is through the supplies and equipments used by the care providers. The cleaning and disinfection procedure is the very important and useful technique to regularly and methodically clean the supplies and equipments used for the patients so that the rest of the patients cared for by the same care providers are not at risk of the same infection. Along with that, it has to be mentioned that gastroenteritis is very easily transmitted by contact transmission hence it is very important for the supplies and equipments used for gastroenteritis patients to be either disposed of ir thoroughly disinfected utilizing the aseptic techniques in order to avoid the other patients being in risk for contact transmission (Barclay et al., 2014).

B).

1). The national safety and quality health service or NSQHS standards have been developed by the Australian commission on safety and quality in health care or ACHQSC. Among the different standards available in NSQHS, the most applicable standard for this situation is the standard 10, “Preventing falls and harm from falls”. This standard is divided into 4 subsections, Governance and systems for the prevention of falls, Screening and assessing risks of falls and harm from falling, Preventing falls and harm from falling, and Communicating with patients and carers. Each sub-section had identified different goals or criteria and subsequent actions to achieve the respective criteria. It has to be mentioned that fall risk is mainly facilitated in facilities by lack of infrastructure or governing system, lack of proper screening and risk assessment, lack of prevention strategies and communication gap between the care provider and the patient. This standard has provided a set of clear directive goals and required actions to achieve the goals in the form of protocol framework that can have significantly decrease te frequency of falls and he harm caused by it in the health care facility (National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards, 2018).

The two identified fall prevention strategies are use of assistive devices such non skid footwear and walking support for the patient and de-cluttering the physical environment for the patent with more luminosity.

Nonskid Footwear: A Beneficial Fall Prevention Strategy

2). According to the Gillespie et al. (2012), one of the greatest contributing factors to fall can be considered as the unstable gait and the possibility of slipping due to either excess body weight or slippery floor. In this case the nonskid footwear provides the patents with additional grip in order to drastically reduce the possibility of fall. They help in increasing traction by the help of special sole material and high tread design of the shoes make them slip resistant. In this case, the patient had also sustained the fall in the slippery floor of the bathroom; hence it will be a beneficial fall prevention strategy. The walking support is more beneficial for patients with gait instability. Due to the weight and fatigue of the infection diseases, the walking support will be beneficial assistance for Pink (Yamaguchi et al., 2012).

Decluttering and added luminosity of the physical environment has also been proven to reduce the frequency of falls in the health care facilities. A cluttered environment reduces the options for a patient with unstable gait and weakness to walk safely without stumbling and hitting the furniture or other equipment clutter. Along with that, the lack of bright lights can also heighten the probability of fall for elderly and frail patients. Hence, both decluttering with enhanced lights to enhance the optimization of safe physical environment will be excellently suitable fall prevention strategy for the patient (Degelau et al., 2012).

References:

Bok, K., & Green, K. Y. (2012). Norovirus gastroenteritis in immunocompromised patients. New England Journal of Medicine, 367(22), 2126-2132. doi: 10.1056/NEJMra1207742

Degelau, J., Belz, M., Bungum, L., Flavin, P. L., Harper, C., Leys, K., ... & Webb, B. (2012). Prevention of falls (acute care). Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement.

Gillespie, L. D., Robertson, M. C., Gillespie, W. J., Sherrington, C., Gates, S., Clemson, L. M., & Lamb, S. E. (2012). Interventions for preventing falls in older people living in the community. Cochrane Database Syst Rev, 9(11). Doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD007146

Guidelines for the Management of Gastroenteritis Outbreaks in Residential Environments in South Australia (2018). Retrieved from https://www.sahealth.sa.gov.au/wps/wcm/connect/7dbceb80436716e69dd1dfc9302c1003/Gastro-guidelines-residential-environments_V2.0-cdcb-ics-20160401.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE-7dbceb80436716e69dd1dfc9302c1003-lKVVSyO

Key Infection Control Recommendations. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/hai/pdfs/norovirus/229110A-NorovirusControlRecomm508A.pdf

Lopman, B., Gastanaduy, P., Park, G. W., Hall, A. J., Parashar, U. D., & Vinjé, J. (2012). Environmental transmission of norovirus gastroenteritis. Current opinion in virology, 2(1), 96-102. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1879625711001702?via%3Dihub

Mayhall, C. G. (2012). Hospital epidemiology and infection control. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards. September 2012 (2018). Retrieved from https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/NSQHS-Standards-Sept-2012.pdf

Yamaguchi, T., Umetsu, T., Ishizuka, Y., Kasuga, K., Ito, T., Ishizawa, S., & Hokkirigawa, K. (2012). Development of new footwear sole surface pattern for prevention of slip-related falls. Safety science, 50(4), 986-994. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925753511003365?via%3Dihub