Question

There has been a large-scale community disaster and clients must be roomed together at the hospital. Who are appropriate roommates in light of infection risk principles? Select all that apply.
1. A client diagnosed with varicella and a client with pertussis.
2. A client placed in an airborne infection isolation room (AIIR) and a client with heart failure.
3. A client receiving chemotherapy and a client with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) coughing yellow sputum.
4. A client with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and a client with coffee ground emesis 5. Two clients diagnosed with tuberculosis.

Answer 1

Answer:

3. A client receiving chemotherapy and a client with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) coughing yellow sputum.

4. A client with pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and a client with coffee ground emesis.

5.Two clients with tuberculosis.

Explanation:

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory lung disease that causes obstructed airflow from the lungs and this disease is not contagious, the yellow sputum indicates the presence of a potentially pathogenic bacteria (infection in your lungs), but it will not be transferred through the air.  A person on chemotherapy treatment has cancer which is also not contagious so these two people may be placed in the same room.

Pelvic inflammation disease (PID) is an infection of the female reproductive organs and is occurs when sexually transmitted bacteria spread from the vagina to the uterus, fallopian tubes or ovaries.  Coffee ground emesis is a type of vomit that looks like coffee grounds meaning there is old blood in the vomit (a person is vomiting blood).  These two are not contagious so the two people can be put in a room together.

Tuberculosis (TB) is an air borne disease that infects mainly the lungs and people may get infected by inhaling the TB bacteria (Mycobacterium tuberculosis).  So when someone with untreated TB coughs or sneezes, the air is then filled with droplets containing the TB bacteria, if a person who does not have TB inhales these droplets they will be infected with the bacteria as well this is called droplet infection.  If two people with TB are in the same room together there is no risk of one affecting the other because they are both already infected by the bacteria, unlike placing someone without TB with a TB patient, that person may be at risk of inhaling the droplet and being infected.  

Heart failure is a condition in which the heart does not pump enough blood to meet the body’s demands (the heart does not pump blood the way it should) and an airborne infection isolation room is a single occupancy care space that’s designed to isolate airborne pathogens to a safe containment area, so there can only be one person in that room we cannot put the heart failure patient in there.  Patients in these rooms have serious illnesses that may pose a risk to hospital staff and these rooms are used to protect the public from the spread of these diseases.

Varicella also known as chicken pox, is a very contagious disease caused by the varicella-zoster virus, and pertussis also known as whooping cough is also a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, so one cannot put two people with different highly contagious diseases in one room.