Quiz 3: Risk assessment and risk management in IPC

Please choose the one, most correct answer to each question or statement.

1. Risk assessment:
   • Is not required in the healthcare environment
   • Is a process that identifies, evaluates and controls hazards in healthcare
   • Is used only to identify potential hazards in healthcare
   • Identifies hazards to patients only.
2. The order of steps in a risk assessment cycle is:
   • Identify, evaluate, assess severity, implement interventions, continue to monitor problem
   • Evaluate, assess severity, identify, implement interventions, continue to monitor problem
   • Implement interventions, identify, evaluate, assess severity, continue to monitor problem
   • Identify, continue to monitor problem, evaluate, assess severity, implement interventions.
3. Risk assessment should be performed:
   • When a patient is admitted to the intensive care unit
   • Every time a needlestick injury occurs
   • When a new service, instrument, procedure or problem is identified
   • Before administering a new type of medication.
4. Risk assessment should be performed by:
   • An experienced IPC practitioner with input from relevant staff
   • An experienced clinician in charge of the ward or clinical area
   • The healthcare facility manager
   • The IPC committee at a healthcare facility.
5. Hazards or risks in healthcare are:
   • Independent of the severity of consequences for a particular hazard
   • Classified as high, medium or low risk
   • Classified as serious or minimal risk
   • Not possible to classify, as they are all of a serious nature.
6. Implementation of risk management in healthcare:
   • Is the responsibility of healthcare facility managers
   • Increases the rate of healthcare-associated infections
   • Does not involve the IPC practitioner
   • Can increase the safety of patients, healthcare workers and visitors.
7. The purpose of risk management in healthcare is:
   • Improve the overall quality of care provided
   • Implement programmes to reduce all forms of harm in healthcare
   • To identify staff and areas where sub-standard care is delivered
   • To save the healthcare facility money.
8. Successful risk management programmes need:
   • Punishment for staff members who don’t comply with recommendations
   • A lot of financial resources to implement
   • Effective leadership from managers and clinician ownership
   • The approval of all stakeholders in the healthcare facility.
9. The following interventions aim to reduce healthcare-associated infections:
   • Standard and transmission-based precautions
   • Universal precautions
   • The clean hospital programme
   • The adverse medication events registry.
10. Standard precautions protect:
    • Healthcare workers only
    • Patients only
    • Visitors only
    • Healthcare workers, patients and visitors.
11. Standard precautions:
    • Apply only to clinical staff (doctors and nurses)
    • Apply only to patients known to have a transmissible - pathogen
    • Reduce infection risk from both known and unrecognised sources
    • Are not cost-effective in reducing infections.
12. Transmission-based precautions:
    • Are implemented based on a pathogens known route/s of transmission
    • Only one type of precaution may be implemented per patient
    • Are implemented in place of standard precautions after the pathogen is identified
    • Involve placing warnings in the patient’s medical file.
13. Infections spread by the droplet route include:
    • Tuberculosis, measles and varicella
    • Skin and wound infections
    • Urinary tract infections with E. coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae
    • Meningococcal meningitis and most respiratory viruses.
14. Precautions required when nursing a newly diagnosed patient with pulmonary TB include:
    • Eye protection, gloves and isolation
    • Standard precautions
    • Airborne precautions
    • Aprons, cohort isolation and negative pressure ventilation.
15. Risk-prone procedures when nursing a patient with influenza pneumonitis include:
    • Dressing a bedsore
    • Changing their urinary catheter bag
    • Inserting a naso-gastric tube
    • Changing a linen saver soiled with faeces.
16. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is needed when:
    • Re-positioning or turning a patient in their bed
    • Feeding an infant his bottle
    • Washing a bed-bound patient
    • Handling linen soiled with urine or vomitus.
17. The major risk from unsafe injection practices is transmission of:
    • Malaria
    • Blood-borne viruses
    • African sleeping sickness
    • Bloodstream infections.
18. Safety-engineered devices:
    • Reduce the risk of needlestick injuries in healthcare workers
    • Are not cost-effective
    • Include fixed needles and auto disable syringes
    • Are not needed in low-resource settings as needlestick injury is uncommon.
19. Care bundles:
    • Are not evidence-based
    • Are implemented for device-associated infections only
    • Require compliance to two or more bundle elements
    • Require buy-in and commitment from a multi-disciplinary team.
20. As bundle compliance increases the infection rate being monitored should:
    • Increase
    • Stay the same
    • Decrease
    • Not be influenced by changes in bundle compliance.