Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.

Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.

The organization applies infection control practices related to the use of medical equipment in crucial care, and this has implications for HAP. In this case, the face has presented protocols that identify the best strategies for disinfecting and sterilizing equipment and maintaining instruments thus ensuring that patients do not come into contact with new pathogens that cause HAP. Firstly, the organization has a strategy for managing mechanical ventilators to reduce the risk of HAP. It stresses that ‘single-use’ devices should not be reused since this has implications for their effectiveness, performance and safety, while exposing patients to unnecessary risks. Also, the facility stresses that reusing a device intended for single use has legal implications. As such, the facility recommends that devices marked for single use must not be reused under any circumstance. Besides that, all medical equipment should be maintained, disinfected and sterilized as instructed by the manufacturers (Cherry & Jacob, 2016).

Secondly, the organization presents a strategy for managing ventilator circuits whereby it instructs that they should be changed every week (7 days), unless they are damaged or spoiled in which case they should be changed sooner. Each patient should use a new ventilator circuit tubing. In addition, contamination should be prevention should having medical personnel wear facial protection when closed breathing circuits are disconnected, especially when dealing with highly communicable infections. Also, breathing circuit concentrate should be periodically drained away from the patient and discarded. Fourthly, nebulizers can become contaminated and act as HAP source. The organization recommends that new nebulizers should be used for single patients, and must be disinfected and cleaned using sterile water between use. Fifthly, reusable resuscitation equipment should be decontaminated according to the manufacturer instruction between each use to minimize HAP risk. Finally, it recommends that all other equipment not listed in the policy should be managed using basic hygienic measures that include single patient use and sterilization between uses. The policies applied at the organization to manage equipment help with reducing HAP opportunities through eliminating pathogens and preventing cross-contamination (Cherry & Jacob, 2016).