Isolation Essay - Grade: A PDF

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Summary

Isolation.
This is a great example of an Evidence Based Practice essay on Isolation and PPE in helathcare.
APA Formatted.
This was written for my Pacient Centered Care Practicum, also known as Clinical. ...

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Running head: ISOLATION

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Isolation Student Name School!

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Personal protective equipment is a major component in health care when it comes to illnesses and diseases that can be spread. When a patient is infected or colonized with an infectious agent (such as bacteria, virus, etc) certain measures need to be taken by the heath care staff to ensure that the infections agents do not come into contact with other people. Transmission - based precautions are measures taken by facilities to prevent infection transmission. There are three main precautions according to the type of transmission; contact precautions, droplet precautions, and airborne precautions. Each precaution has many different actions to take in order to eliminate the certain type of transmission. There are two things that are included in each, isolation and personal protective equipment (PPE) (CDC, 2017). In this short write up I am going to be covering why PPE and isolation are important, describing the different methods of PPE and isolation, and review evidence based articles to compare and contrast types of isolation and PPE.

The main purpose of a healthcare facility is to treat patient’s health needs, in other words make them better. When a patient is diagnosed with an illness or disease they need to be treated, but if that disease is infectious or can be transmitted, it can spread rapidly. So how does a healthcare facility treat the infected person with out endangering the non - infected patients? This is where isolation and personal protective equipment are used. Isolation and PPE are key components of safety not only to the infected, but anyone in a healthcare environment including non-infected patients and staff. Isolating the infected patient removes them from any contact with other people, eliminating the initial and simple transmission of infectious agents. But staff still need to come into contact with the infected patient in order to treat them. Proper donning of PPE

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will protect the staff member while they are in the room with the infected patient. Proper doffing of PPE will protect everyone out side of the patients room. With proper doffing techniques, the infectious agents will not have anyway of transmitting further. In the end everyone should be safe. According to the specific type of transmission, different methods of PPE are used. Contact precautions require a patient to be roomed alone, or with patients with the same infection. PPE for staff members will include gloves and gowns. Droplet precuts requires a patient to have their own room, or share a room with someone with the same infection. The patient must have their own equipment designated to them that stays in the room. PPE includes gloves, gowns, and masks. Airborne precautions require that patients have their own room with a negative pressure airflow exchange. PPE requirements are gloves, gown, and N-95 or high efficiency respirator. Full face protection is also recommended. (Henry, 2016, p. 52). The main goal of isolation and PPE is to inhibit transmission, and to do that health care providers need to respond to the specific path of transmission certain infectious agents take.

If personal protective equipment is not properly enforced and used, the transmission will still take place. A great example of this is a case-controlled study directed by a group of microbiologists and the Advisors of Expert SARS group of Hospital Authority (Seto, 2003, p. 1519-20). The study looked at 5 Hong Kong hospitals where there were a number of staff infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or commonly known as SARS. In these specific hospitals, staff were to respond to SARS as a droplet precaution. The researchers conducted a survey on the staff who came into contact with SARS infected patients. The survey asked out of

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the four PPE protective measures; glove, gown, mask, and hand washing, which did they use. The results of the survey were as followed, “None of the 69 staff reporting use of all four measures became infected. By contrast, all 13 infected staff had omitted at least one of the measures” (Seto, 2003, p. 1520). This shows that the use of PPE is only significant is you follow it correctly, but if it followed correctly it will inhibit the transmission of infected agents.

Overall, isolation and personal protective equipment have been a large success in health care. With it, infected patients can be cared for, non - infected patients have a reduced risk of infection, and health care facility staff can work in a safe environment. !

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CDC. (2017, February 28). Infection Control. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/-------———infectioncontrol/basics/transmission-based-precautions.html Henry, N. J. (2016). Fundamentals for nursing: Review module. Stilwell, KS: Assessment ———-Technologies Institute. Seto, W., Tsang, D., Yung, R., Ching, T., Ng, T., Ho, M., . . . Peiris, J. (2003). Effectiveness of ———-precautions against droplets and contact in prevention of nosocomial transmission of ———-severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The Lancet, 361(9368), 1519-1520. doi: ———-10.1016/s0140-6736(03)13168-6

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