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:
4. Logistics: adequate physical resources and services required
5. Triage: appropriate protocols and location
6. Communication: timely and effective contact internal and external of the facility regarding a suspected or confirmed outbreak
7. Infection control: sufficient measures to protect hospital employees, patients, and the public
8. Human resources: efficient management of human capital in response to a suspected or confirmed outbreak
9. Responsibilities of various hospital departments: effective interventions by primary and ancillary departments in response to a suspected or confirmed outbreak
10. Reflect the nurse’s ability to:
11. Assess and identify the disease outbreak
12. Support containment and treatment of the disease
13. Facilitate timely communication regarding the outbreak
Resources:
· For additional assistance on creating an emergency response plan, please read the Library Answer to: How do I create an emergency response plan?
· For additional information on hospital preparedness for epidemics, consider exploring the World Health Organization’s 2014 report, Hospital Preparedness for Epidemics
