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A 36-year-old female is bit by a raccoon and presents to the emergency department with mild trauma to her right lower extremity. Following a triage assessment, the patient’s wound is cleaned and dressed. The physician verbalizes concern that the patient may have been exposed to rabies from the bite. One role of the RN is to provide education to the patient regarding rabies infection and its transmission.

The patient’s mother expresses concern about her daughter’s fevers. She states that the fevers are a sign that her child is unable to fight this infection. What is a proper response to these concerns?

A 78-year-old male presents to the emergency department reporting a 2-day history of difficulty breathing, cough, and chest pain. Upon triage assessment, the patient is found to have a fever, rapid rate of breathing, low oxygen saturation, and crackles upon auscultation of the lungs. A chest X-ray reveals consolidation in the right upper lung field. The patient is diagnosed with pneumonia, initiated on oxygen therapy, and admitted for observation and treatment.

The patient’s salmonella diagnosis is a reportable disease and you contact the appropriate state agency to begin an investigation. The patient specimen will be evaluated by what method used by the CDC to identify cases in an outbreak?

You are a RN in a primary care office is caring for a 15-year-old male with severe gastrointestinal distress. The patient reports four days of diarrhea, vomiting, and intermittent fever. A stool culture was ordered in an attempt to identify a disease-causing pathogen.

If the patient develops rabies infection, the time from the bite to the appearance of symptoms is referred to as what stage of the infection?

As an RN with the infectious disease team, you are providing an education course to new graduate nurses regarding the process of infection control and prevention.

You are a RN working at an urban low-income medical clinic when a young woman enters crying. She is 19 years old and 28 weeks pregnant with her second child. The woman reports that she woke this morning to find she was leaking milky-colored fluid vaginally. Her first child was born 6 weeks early due to premature rupture of membranes and she is worried this is happening again. You reassure the patient, explain that a vaginal speculum exam will be performed, and educate her about specimens that will be collected. Once the proper specimens are obtained and appropriately labeled, the wet mount and culturette are sent to the laboratory for processing.

The public health department is following a 34-year-old male who has reported several weeks of general malaise and a low-grade fever. The nurse assigned to his case communicates with the patient regarding the results of his laboratory testing.

You are a RN at an elementary school and notice a second grade female scratching and pulling at her pants. The student complains that her buttocks itch. Upon further assessment, the patient reports that the itching worsened in the morning hours. Since another child in the student’s class was recently diagnosed with Enterobius vermicularis, or pinworm infection, you contact the girl’s mother and recommends follow up with her pediatrician.