Sterile Procedures

LESSON 5: Isolation

5-4

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5-4. ROOM

A private room should contain hand washing, bathing, and connecting toilet facilities. Connecting toilet facilities make unnecessary the need for portable commodes or special transportation techniques for commodes, bedpans, and urinals. The implementation of isolation can be simplified if special rooms on one or more wards are available for isolation.

a. The room or area should have a minimum ventilation (supply and exhaust) of six air changes per hour. These areas should be constructed so that there is no cross-circulation or recirculation of air, unless passed through high-efficiency filters, between the isolation room and other sections of the hospital.

b. An anteroom between the room and the hall, especially for rooms housing patients in strict isolation or respiratory isolation, will help in maintaining these two categories of isolation by providing storage space for gowns, gloves, and masks. These anterooms also reduce the possibility of airborne spread of infectious agents from the room into the corridor whenever the door of the isolation room is opened. The anteroom should be under slightly negative pressure with regard to the hall. It is preferable for the anteroom, as well as the isolation room, to have its own supply and exhaust for ventilated air.

c. The room design of many, especially older, hospitals may not allow for adequate control of air movement. Therefore, complete control of droplet nuclei and dust particles is not possible. If proper air-handling capabilities are lacking, a commercially available window fan to exhaust air from the room may be used to control airflow. It is far preferable, however, for the hospital to install permanent ventilation systems in an adequate number of rooms specified for isolation. Window fans might be installed in rooms of patients admitted with disease spread by the airborne route, such as staphylococcal pneumonia, or chickenpox. Window fans may be of special use in improving isolation of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.

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