Science

Case study:

Jennifer Smith has just started her first day of her placement. She has never been on placement before. Her work experience is taking place at a care home. She has been told that majority of elderly people have dementia, therefore, she must not handle them alone.

As she enters the building, one of the service users (an elderly person), leaves the building and informs Jennifer he is going to smoke for while and come back as soon as he is done. Jennifer leaves the door open for him and agrees to let him go, as no staff was around and opening the door meant a security code was needed.

The old man has a walking stick with him, and as he walks passed the door, he trips on one of the wheel chairs and gets hurt on his elbow which leads to excessive bleeding.

Hazards:

* Infections

* Equipments

* Security Systems

One of the hazards that could occur from this health setting in the case study would be having or spreading an infection. An infection is usually referred to the invasion and multiplications of microorganisms. These include bacteria, viruses and parasites that are normally not present in the body. [1] One example of infection hazard would be that if the wound of the elderly person is not cleaned properly, and has dry patches of blood, which could potentially come in skin contact of another elderly person. This could be the due the blood being absorbed in an open part of a wound. A harm for this would the spread of disease could be passed on, as the service user may have tuberculosis, which means that most likely it can be passed onto another service user because of skin contact. Another main harm that could occur from this is perhaps the service user who tripped and has excessive bleeding may even had a blood infection known as sepsis. This could also provide harm and a spread of disease to other elderly people and service users. Service users with sepsis are prone to die with cancer, as infections have reached the blood stream....