HAC Safety & Infection Control 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which isolation precaution category requires a dedicated HEPA-filtered negative-pressure room?
- Contact precautions
- Droplet precautions
- Airborne infection isolation (Correct answer)
- Protective environment isolation
Correct 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.
Question 2: Under OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard, how often must employers offer Hepatitis B vaccination to at-risk employees at no cost?
- Only at initial hire
- Annually
- Within 10 days of assignment to at-risk duties (Correct answer)
- Every 3 years
Correct 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.
Question 3: A healthcare analyst notices surgical site infection rates spike following a HVAC maintenance outage. Which infection control measure is most directly implicated?
- Hand hygiene compliance
- Antibiotic stewardship protocols
- Positive-pressure airflow in ORs (Correct answer)
- Personal protective equipment usage
Correct 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.
Question 4: The CDC's Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) Tier 1 precautions are applied to:
- All patients regardless of diagnosis (Correct answer)
- Only immunocompromised patients
- Patients with confirmed MRSA only
- Patients on mechanical ventilation
Correct 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.
Question 5: Which metric best measures the effectiveness of a hospital's central-line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) prevention program?
- Total catheter insertion days
- Standardized Infection Ratio (SIR) compared to national baseline (Correct answer)
- Number of blood cultures ordered per month
- Staff completion rate of CLABSI training modules
Correct 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.
Question 6: When performing a root-cause analysis (RCA) after a needlestick injury, which system-level factor is most commonly identified as a contributing cause?
- Employee fatigue
- Lack of sharps disposal containers at point of use (Correct answer)
- Incorrect glove size
- Insufficient lighting in the unit
Correct 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.
Question 7: 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?
- Quaternary ammonium compounds
- Isopropyl alcohol 70%
- EPA-registered sporicidal agents (e.g., sodium hypochlorite) (Correct answer)
- Hydrogen peroxide vapor at 3%
Correct 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.
HAC Safety & Infection Control 2
Which isolation precaution category requires a dedicated HEPA-filtered negative-pressure room?