Infection Control and Fall Prevention Report: Mrs. Smith's Case Study

This report analyzes infection control and fall prevention strategies in a healthcare setting, focusing on a case involving Mrs. Smith. The report addresses key infection control principles, such as the use of personal protective equipment and cleaning/disinfecting supplies, to minimize the transmission of gastroenteritis, a highly contagious viral infection. It provides rationales for these measures, emphasizing the importance of blocking transmission routes and protecting healthcare providers and other patients. Additionally, the report discusses the importance of the NSQHS standards, specifically Standard 10, "Preventing falls and harm from falls," and identifies fall prevention strategies like using assistive devices and de-cluttering the environment. Rationales for these strategies are provided, highlighting the significance of gait stability, footwear, and environmental safety in preventing falls and further injury. The report utilizes various references to support the information.

Running head: INFECTION CONTROL
Infection control
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Report Template:
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 (word limit 200).
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. Provide rationales for their implementation (word limit 300).
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,

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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 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).
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 (word limit 200).
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

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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.
2. Provide rationales for implementation to prevent further injury (word limit 300).
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).

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References:
Barclay, L., Park, G. W., Vega, E., Hall, A., Parashar, U., Vinjé, J., & Lopman, B. (2014).
Infection control for norovirus. Clinical microbiology and infection, 20(8), 731-740.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-0691.12674
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. Retrieved
from https://www. icsi. org/_asset/dcn15z/Falls. pdf.
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
http://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

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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. doi.org/10.1016/j.coviro.2011.11.005
Mayhall, C. G. (2012). Hospital epidemiology and infection control. Lippincott Williams &
Wilkins. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=y-
wKh8oIdn8C&oi=fnd&pg=PT78&dq=infection+control+principles&ots=w9CM7H6WS
a&sig=DwpdMccwMDfMsxzUxSqS5BmG4gU&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=infection
%20control%20principles&f=false
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. doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2011.12.017