Responding to Disease Outbreaks

Description

Purpose of Assignment: Nurses have a role in ensuring safety and quality in healthcare and evaluating potential threats to quality and safety. A response plan is useful in determining the steps and actions that staff will take in a situation such as a disease outbreak. Course Competency: Evaluate responses of communicable diseases in healthcare today. Scenario: You are the infection control nurse of a 100-bed inpatient healthcare facility. With the increasing potential for a communicable disease exposure in your facility, the chief clinical officer has tasked you with the creation of a hospital response plan for a communicable disease outbreak in your healthcare facility. Instructions: Create a hospital response plan that effectively addresses a healthcare facility’s actions in response to a communicable disease outbreak of your choosing. The response plan should: 1.Identify a communicable disease and explain why this particular disease necessitates a response plan. 2.Be supported by current evidence. 3.Include guidance on the following: -Logistics: adequate physical resources and services required -Triage: appropriate protocols and location -Communication: timely and effective contact internal and external of the facility regarding a suspected or confirmed outbreak -Infection control: sufficient measures to protect hospital employees, patients, and the public -Human resources: efficient management of human capital in response to a suspected or confirmed outbreak -Responsibilities of various hospital departments: effective interventions by primary and ancillary departments in response to a -suspected or confirmed outbreak 4.Reflect the nurse’s ability to: -Assess and identify the disease outbreak -Support containment and treatment of the disease -Facilitate timely communication regarding the outbreak Below are examples of communicable diseases that you can use for this assignment. Covid-19 Tuberculosis HIV/AIDS Influenza Hepatitis A/B Measles MRSA Ebola