Question

Instructions Using the website, Emergency Preparedness, in three to four paragraphs, write a summary of how your office should handle a patient who presents with a low-grade fever and recent travel to West Africa. Be sure to address topics such as isolation, exposure risk to staff and patients who were in the waiting room, and steps to have in place BEFORE the patient who traveled to West Africa and now has a low-grade temperature shows up at the office.

Answer 1

Emergency preparedness refers to the steps taken to be equipped to respond to and live to tell the tale during an emergency. Government agencies, communities, businesses, hospitals and emergency responders spend sizable time, assets and monies preparing for these emergencies.A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to perform actions or impose policies that it would normally not be permitted to undertake. A government can declare such a state during a natural disaster, civil unrest, armed conflict, medical pandemic or epidemic or other biosecurity risk.. These preparations encompass planning and drills.Emergency preparedness planning involves identifying organisational resources, determining roles and responsibilities, developing policies and procedures and planning activities in order to reach a level of preparedness to be able to respond timely and effectively to a emergency one occur.

Health care employees (HCWs) in the emergency medical services (EMS) and health center settings often stumble upon patients infected with dangerous communicable diseases.Careful adherence to standard, contact, and droplet precautions, as outlined for HCWs by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (1), prevents exposure to blood or bodily fluids contaminated with virus. Prevention of sickness transmission in health care settings, along with EMS transport, entails more than the acceptable use of non-public protective gear (PPE).Health care workers inconsistently adhere to such basic infection control practices as hand hygiene (2), and EMS provider adherence to infection control precautions and equipment disinfection can be suboptimal (3). Environmental samples from clinical settings inside and outside the hospital have revealed contamination with serious pathogens

Patient transport immediately into the isolation unit restricted exposure to different sufferers or traffic at the hospital. Decontamination and disinfection of the ambulance used to be facilitated by using barrier drapes. All environmental surfaces and waste baggage were disinfected with an agent approved by means of Environmental Protection Agency, with terrific surface contact time. Disinfection of the ambulance, collection of infectious waste, and elimination of PPE were without delay supervised to make certain no violation of method or breach of protocol.

Patients with fever or respiratory symptoms should wear a mask and should be promptly directed to a separate waiting area or examination room apart from other patients. Aerosol producing procedures are performed must be modified to meet airborne isolation standard to protect staffs and other patients. Giving tissues to patients and instructing them to cover their mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing and to dispose used tissues.