Safety & Infection Control Flashcards

Which isolation precaution category requires a dedicated HEPA-filtered negative-pressure room?

Answer: Airborne infection isolation

Airborne infection isolation rooms maintain negative pressure with ≥12 air changes per hour and HEPA filtration to prevent spread of pathogens like M. tuberculosis.

Under OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard, how often must employers offer Hepatitis B vaccination to at-risk employees at no cost?

Answer: Within 10 days of assignment to at-risk duties

OSHA 29 CFR 1910.1030 requires employers to offer HBV vaccination within 10 working days of an employee's initial assignment to tasks with occupational exposure.

A healthcare analyst notices surgical site infection rates spike following a HVAC maintenance outage. Which infection control measure is most directly implicated?

Answer: Positive-pressure airflow in ORs

Operating rooms require positive-pressure ventilation to prevent environmental pathogens from entering the sterile field; HVAC failure compromises this barrier.

The CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) Tier 1 precautions are applied to:

Answer: All patients regardless of diagnosis

Tier 1 (Standard Precautions) apply to all patients at all times because any patient may harbor unrecognized infectious agents.

Which metric best measures the effectiveness of a hospital's central-line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) prevention program?

Answer: Standardized Infection Ratio (SIR) compared to national baseline

The SIR adjusts for patient risk and facility type, providing a risk-stratified comparison to the NHSN national baseline to reflect true prevention effectiveness.

When performing a root-cause analysis (RCA) after a needlestick injury, which system-level factor is most commonly identified as a contributing cause?

Answer: Lack of sharps disposal containers at point of use

Research consistently identifies absence or inconvenient placement of sharps containers as a primary system failure driving needlestick events.

A facility reports a Clostridium difficile infection rate above the 75th NHSN percentile. Which environmental cleaning agent is specifically required for C. diff spore elimination?

Answer: EPA-registered sporicidal agents (e.g., sodium hypochlorite)

C. difficile spores are resistant to alcohol and quaternary ammonium disinfectants; EPA-registered sporicidal agents such as diluted bleach (sodium hypochlorite) are required.