Examples Of Residential Home Outbreaks

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Clinical Makeup Assignment Ashna Labana NURS-1512 Helen Joel March 30, 2017

Outbreaks in the Residential Home Setting

Introduction

Humans have an amazing human body, we have the ability to use our immune systems and fight off the bad bacteria or the unknown virus that can decide to attack us. However, when our body fails to do this, we end up getting sick and having the virus or bacterial infection take over. When this happens, we show symptoms which can affect us mentally, emotionally and physically. It can prevent us from continuing to do our activities of daily living. Unfortunately, this is not always the case for everyone, when aging occurs in the human
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It all starts when the infected host (sick person) comes into work and infection control practices are not taken. The infection will start to spread when we give direct care to residents. These residents then fall sick, many of them have mental illness such as schizophrenia, dementia and Alzheimer’s or physical disabilities and struggle to take care of themselves. Due to this reason, many residents do not have the chance to wash their hands frequently or they will not remember to sneeze/cough in their elbows. As they carry out with their day, they may touch different environments or cough and sneeze causing many other residents to get sick, causing an outbreak to happen. This can affect the whole entire community and health care providers must be fully geared and follow precautions when coming into the home. When on outbreak many are not allowed to be into the home since we can bring in new bacteria from the community and increase the risk of …show more content…
If everyone follows the right precautions we reduce the risks for transmissions. The number one method to reduce the risk of infection is to wash your hands. Although washing your hands does not kill everything, it significantly reduces the number of bacteria. Using antibacterial hand sanitizers is an effective method as well. As an infected host, it is important to reduce the chances of others getting infections by educating people to follow simple procedures about not sharing things with others, to have protected sex, to get immunizations and vaccines and to practice respiratory etiquette (sneezing/coughing in our elbows or tissues), as well as staying home! By staying home and not going to work or school until you are no longer a threat, it reduces the chances of others getting sick especially in residential care