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Question - Are my daughter and her co-workers at risk of catching an infectious disease?:

Hello, Please help me. My daughter works at a Personal Care Home along with a number of teenagers. My daughter, however, is 33 years old. She works in the kitchen serving and cleaning tables and washing dishes along with other kitchen cleaning-type duties. Her supervisor held a meeting yesterday and announced that they are getting a senior resident with a very contagious bowel disease that cannot be cured. When my daughter kept asking what the disease was, her supervisor consistently avoided answering the question. This supervisor instructed the kitchen crew to wear gloves at all times since they would be scraping this resident's plates even though contact would otherwise be confined to the resident's room! My daughter is concerned about contamination especially since the crew she is working with is teenagers and tends to be careless in a sterile environment. Our question is, since this Personal Care Home is a very large facility (average 100 resident population) and is owned by a very large conglomerate - type concern, are they within their legal rights to expose kitchen help thereby exposing the other residents and their guests? Another question: Should my daughter report this condition to an authority and if so, to whom?

Guide Responds:

-Having patients with contagious disease in a nursing home, hospital or even in the home can be safely handled with appropriate precautions - -With most contagious disease, healthy people are not most at risk, it is usually those with lowered immune systems, and the old and infirm (the other residents) -if the personal care home is licensed there should be an infection control policy (most states should require this) - your daughter should be familiar with this and should be within her rights to request to see this policy -for most infectious disease gloves offer adequate protection- -many facilities use disposable when a patient has an infectious disease as it is much easier to contain these, and dispose of - your daughter might want to talk to the supervisor about this -if she still has concerns she may want to contact the county public health office for more information.

• Handwashing Prevents Infection
• Hepatitis A

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