Covid-19 emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, resulting in severe illness and panic to the human race. Since its outbreak, the new coronavirus has rapidly spread from China to other nations causing the World Health Organization to announce it as a worldwide medical emergency (NNU, 2020). Health care workers have been infected with the virus since January, mainly due to being exposed following their manager’s ignorance and lack of provision of protective material.
The preparedness of health facilities when the virus broke out did not meet the standards that would prevent it from spreading. Nurses and healthcare workers ended up getting infected due to a lack of protection as should be provided by the institution they work in (Chopra et al., 2020). In China, cases of infected healthcare workers were reported on January 21, 2020, and recent reports indicate at least fourteen infected nurses.
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Various principles should be applied in the nursing process to the health care workers on matters regarding coronavirus. Nurses and other workers should take responsibility for the kind of healthcare they offer and assume liability over any consequence. For instance, healthcare facilities should be ready to accept the guilt of not being prepared and consequently having their workers infected with the virus (Chopra et al., 2020). To keep everyone safe, healthcare organizations should isolate infected persons. They should also communicate with the patients as well as the community over any incident concerning the virus and provide measures that should be put in place.
Strategies that should have been put in place to prevent the spread of Covid-19 include provision of protective gloves and masks to avoid direct contact with the patients; immediately isolating people who are suspected of having the coronavirus; limiting the spread of an infected person’s respiratory excretions, and controlling the number of health care workers who have access to the isolation areas (UNMC, 2007). Besides, individuals should frequently wash their hands with water and soap or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, avoid touching the eyes, nose, and mouth with unclean hands, and avoid close contact with infected people.
References
UNMC HEROES, (2007). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxdaSeq4EVU &feature=youtu.be. Hospital PPE - Infection Control: Donning and Doffing
Chopra, V., Toner, E., Waldhorn, R., & Washer, L. (2020). How Should US Hospitals Prepare for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)? Annals of Internal Medicine .
NNU, (2020). https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/covid-19 Nurses' call about COVID-19 precautions
