What information is pertinent to your client’s case?
The client's environmental health is relative to her exposure to the quality of air, land, and water around her home, work, and community. The pertinent information in the client's case is the seven years consistent and chronic respiratory infection that does not change regardless of the seasons. The frequency of the illness also appears to be more intense than usual amongst older adults. Her lack of tobacco use is also crucial information because it is one of the risk factors contributing to respiratory infections (Thompson & Schwartz, 2017). The nature of her work as an executive assistant doing office work eliminates the probability of occupational exposure to the illness. Vulnerability is in terms of exposure to fumes or toxins that are directly associated with manual laboring in manufacturing industries.
Working in a 10-year-old building is also a pertinent concern because she shares similar respiratory illnesses with her coworkers who vary in age and lifestyle. This information is significant because of environmental exposure in old buildings that usually the risk of lead or asbestos pollutants and indoor pollutants (Thompson & Schwartz, 2017). Sharing information about her new residence at the golf club is also pertinent because of the possibility of allergens during the cutting of grass and landscaping. Golf courses are groomed more frequently than other types of residences leading to increased risk of exposure to allergens and spores.
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How would you assess your client's risk?
To assess my client's environmental risk, I need to use the I_PREPARE model to evaluate her Present work in her law firm, and her Residence at the golf club (Castner, Amiri, Rodriguez, Huntington‐Moskos, Thompson, Zhao, & Polivka, 2019). I also need to investigate her Past work risk exposure, her daily Activities, her Referrals, and Resources that might expose her to environmental risk. Each unique location is crucial for investigation due to the possibility of overlapping risk to environmental exposure. In this case, the main focus should be in her work environment due to the pertinent information that her coworkers share similar frequent respiratory infections. Furthermore, she spends most of her time at the office and does not have any tobacco use past and present. Additionally, the illnesses started seven years ago, yet she has worked in the law firm for nine years. The environmental exposure is more prone to exist within her work context. The residence, community, and products she uses should also uncover other contributors to her ecological risk.
What would be an exposure pathway for your client?
The exposure pathway of the client would be through inhalation, as evidenced by her report on year-round respiratory infections that do not change regardless of the seasons. The start of the disease was also two years after she started working at the 100-year-old courtroom building. The nature of her work as an executive assistant also requires maximum time at the office than any other location. The old building carries the risk of lead pollutants, old paint coming off the wall, and asbestos that takes some time to show results of exposure in a person (Castner et al., 2019). Such buildings often also have a lot of dust that adds the exposure of air pollutants through inhalation. Furthermore, her residence is near a golf club, which is usually groomed more frequently than other locations. During landscaping, the activity increases the number of allergens in the air, which she inhaled together, which plant spores that enter her house. Therefore, inconsistent frequent respiratory illnesses are due to the inhalation of air pollutants at work and home. The inhalation pathway, in this case, is difficult to control because most air pollutants are invisible and undetectable by the naked eye.
References
Castner, J., Amiri, A., Rodriguez, J., Huntington‐Moskos, L., Thompson, L. M., Zhao, S., & Polivka, B. (2019). Advancing the symptom science model with environmental health. Public Health Nursing , 36(5), 716-725.
Thompson, M. R., & Schwartz Barcott, D. (2017). The concept of exposure in environmental health for nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing , 73(6), 1315-1330.