The licensed practical/vocational nurse (LP/VN) is working on a medical–surgical unit in a hospital and recently had an in-service on emerging contagious diseases

Question

Which action should the nurse take to best safe guard the clients he cares for, and the staff he works with on this unit? When any client is admitted to the unit the nurse should:
A) assess the client for signs and symptoms of an infectious disease.
B) ask the client if he or she has recently traveled outside of the country in the past 2 months, or someone the client is close to has and what country and when.
C) visit the Centers of Disease Control National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infections Diseases Web site.
D) provide all possible precautions to prevent the potential spread of infectious disease.

Answer 1

Ans: B
Feedback:
Along with proper hand washing, using alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and using standard precautions, the nurse's best safe guard for helping to prevent the spread of emerging contagious diseases is to ask the client if he/she or someone they are close to has recently traveled outside of the country in the past couple of months, and if so what country and when. The client may have been exposed to the illness and may not immediately show signs and symptoms, but be contagious and spread the illness. The CDC may not have updated the Web site in time to warn the staff of an emerging illness, or may not have any cases reported as of yet, so the nurse's hospital may be the first hospital to experience an emerging contagious disease. Isolating all clients is impractical and costly, plus it decreases the ability for the nurse–client relationship to adequately occur with if all possible personal protective equipment is used.