Ensure your patients are familiar with their environment, thus making it less hazardous to them. This familiarization can be accomplished in many ways, such as by showing your patients the floor plan of the ward they have been admitted to and by indicating key areas (lounge, bathrooms, nursing station, etc.) that may be of interest to them.

Be aware of patient sensory impairment and incorporate precautionary procedures into their patient-care plan. For example, this principle can be applied to patients who have been given a pain medication, such as morphine or Demerol(r). Medications such as these dull body senses. If a patient in this condition wishes to walk around, precautionary actions dictate that you either be close at hand to prevent the patient from accidental falls or that you do not permit the patient to ambulate until the effects of the medication have stopped.

Understand that all diagnostic and therapeutic measures have the potential to cause a patient harm.
Ensure that all accidents and incidents are documented and analyzed to identify and correct high-risk safety hazards.

ENVIRONMENTAL HYGIENE
LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Identify environmental hygiene concerns in a medical treatment facility.

Today's public is very much aware of the environment and its effect on the health and comfort of human beings. The healthcare setting is a unique environment and has a distinct character of its own. You need to be aware of that character and ensure that the environment will support the optimum in health maintenance, care, and rehabilitation.

In the context of the environment, hygiene may best be described as practices that provide a healthy environment. Basically, environmental hygiene practices include the following three areas of concern: safety (which has already been addressed); environmental comfort and stimuli; and, finally, infection control (which will be discussed briefly here, but in greater detail later in this chapter under "Medical Asepsis"). You have certain responsibilities for helping to control the facility's general environment as well as the patient's immediate surroundings.