During my time working in a hospital as a student nurse, I was tasked with coordinating patient care with multidisciplinary teams, patient physical assessment and administering, distributing and preparing medications as per physician instruction among other functions in a learning capacity. During this period, there was a substantial increase in admitted patients getting infected with the COVID-19 virus.
During the early stages, there were no hospital requirements to separate admissions or quarantine for at least two weeks (CDC, 2021). Many staff members raised their concerns about the handling of new admissions but the hospital administrators did not immediately address these concerns. This resulted to COVID-19 infections increasing rapidly to the point where state and federal agencies contemplated lockdown and other severe measures to curb the spread of the virus. Soon afterwards, new regulations were placed that prevented patients from being infected. These included a designated entry for visitors, promotion of education materials on COVID-19 and how it spreads, isolating COVID patients and provision of adequate hand hygiene facilities for staff members, patients and visitors alike.
After implementing the above recommendations, the rate of COVID-19 infection in the hospital gradually reduced. These decisions were made from recommended sources such as the CDC website with guidelines for healthcare facilities in the COVID context (CDC, 2020). Promoting the acceptance and application of evidence-based regulations is a vital approach to public health improvement (Young et al., 2018). Additionally, the hospital administrators had consulted with administrators from other states and regions and compared strategies on how to best avoid the increasing patient COVID-19 infections. This is a sort of benchmarking that is effective in improving hospital processes (Wind & van Harten, 2017).

References

CDC. (2020). Healthcare Workers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 5 November 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/non-us-settings/hcf-visitors.html.

CDC. (2021). COVID-19 and Your Health. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved 5 November 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html.

Wind, A., & van Harten, W. (2017). Benchmarking specialty hospitals, a scoping review on theory and practice. BMC Health Services Research, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2154-y

Young, A., Lowry, G., Mumford, K., & Graaf, C. (2018). CDC’s Prevention Status Reports: Monitoring the Status of Public Health Policies and Practices for Improved Performance and Accountability. Journal Of Public Health Management And Practice, 24(2), 121-128. https://doi.org/10.1097/phh.0000000000000507