Jaime Carrera, a Hispanic man in his late 20s, is brought to Inner City Health Care, an urgent care center, by coworkers when he
injures his head in an accident at a construction site where he is working. His head is bleeding profusely. As Jaime's coworkers watch the health care team implement Standard Precautions for infection control, one of them, his own shirt and hands covered with Jaime's blood, pulls the medical assistant aside and whispers frantically, "What are you doing? Does he have AIDS?" What is the best therapeutic response of the medical assistant?
The best therapeutic response of the medical assistant will be to explain to Jaime’s coworker that it is a procedure applied to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
Explanation
Standard precautions are applied to protect<u> individuals handling patients against possible transmission and outbreak of communicable infections. </u>These procedures are vital because they help to prevent spread of blood related infections such as hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, TB, and Hantavirus. These infections could be transferred through a touch, sexual intercourse, oral transmission and droplets.
SIRS was defined as fulfilling at least two of the following four criteria: fever >38.0°C or hypothermia <36.0°C, tachycardia >90 beats/minute, tachypnea >20 breaths/minute, leucocytosis >12*109/l or leucopoenia <4*109/l.
