Question

Description:

Shenya Jones, 34-year-old female, arrives at the office with swelling and a red pustule on her face. She states that the problem started 2 days ago as a small pimple near her nose. It became irritated, and then extremely swollen and painful overnight. This morning, she noticed yellow drainage at the lesion site and the swelling has increased. The area of drainage is approximately 1 cm in diameter. Her upper lip, side of the face, and nose are all swollen. The examination and treatment areas need to be prepared before you bring her to the back office.

Discussion Questions:

1. What needs to be done before Shenya is brought back into the exam room?

2. Shenya is diagnosed with community-acquired MRSA (a highly contagious microorganism). What measures should you take to ensure there is no transfer of infection?

3. After Shenya’s examination, you will need to use an ultrasonic cleaner for sanitization. Describe how you would proceed and what source you would use if you had questions about the cleaner you are using.

P.S: Please answer all 3 questions individually. Thank you.

Answer 1

1. Examination room in a healthcare is where the patient is assessed physically, it plays an important role in planning a treatment. With respect to the patients complain the healthcare worker needs to take contact isolation precautions as the complaint stated by patient is a skin infection, hence, proper personal protective equipment should be worn and should be discarded in biohazard garbage bag. In addition, proper lighting should be present in the room so as to observe the colour of the discharge and the consistency of it. Lastly, equipments such as swab should be available in order to take the pus sample for lab tests.

2. Basically, MRSA (Methicillin- resistant staphylococcus aureus) is a skin infection and is bacterial in nature, it is highly contagious and can even survive in the environment for a long period. As discussed above it is a skin infection and hence the healthcare worker needs to follow contact isolation protocol so PPE is necessary especially gown and gloves and after the assessment proper hand washing should be done. Apart from that the assessor need to make sure that the examination room post the physical assessment is fumigated and sterilised in order to prevent cross infection or transmission.

3. After the assessment the room needs to be properly cleaned with disinfectant and fumigation should be done for atleast 12 hours (depends according to hospital protocol). The hard surfaces such as monitor, keyboard, bed , stethoscope etc also needs to be deep cleaned.