Public Health Crisis

Your organization includes several pediatric and neonatal intensive care units, located in different hospitals. The facilities were built at different times in recent history and so have different layouts – some with open bays, some with multi-bed rooms, and some with private rooms. The province has been facing a public health outbreak where hundreds of people are testing positive for a little-known pathogen. While public health experts figure out what is going on, it has been determined that the number of people entering and leaving the facility should be absolutely minimized and that anyone entering the facility should fully dressed in PPE – which itself is in short supply. As a result, all NICU and pediatric units have been observing a strict policy of allowing only one parent at a time to be present. Staff, also in short supply, are spending time ensuring that parents coming onto the unit are donning and doffing PPE appropriately. The number of positive cases in the community...
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Harm Reduction in the Hospital

Dora is a patient in her thirties. She is an inpatient on a regular medical/surgical unit at the University hospital. Years ago, she was in a car accident and sustained a spinal-cord injury and she is now a paraplegic. As a result, Dora uses a wheelchair to get around. She is in the hospital for IV antibiotic treatment because of a blood infection the doctors suspect was caused by her opioid use. She began using after the car accident. Her antibiotic treatment is delivered via a PICC line (peripherally inserted central catheter). Normally, a patient requiring this treatment could receive antibiotics at home. But Dora will not let community health nurses into her house, and due to her IV drug use it is uncertain or unlikely that she will be present at home when she needs to receive her antibiotics. The care team has determined that being an inpatient at the hospital will make it more likely she will receive her...
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