The five main types of infectious agents are bacteria, protozoa, viruses,parasitic worms, and fungi.
4 Steps for Infection Prevention and Control
- Wash Your Hands. Nurses' hands require near constant cleaning with soap and water or antibacterial gel.
- Protect Clean Surfaces. Everything a nurse touches has the potential to spread germs or infectious illness.
- Promote Vaccinations.
- Know Proper Procedures and Protocol.
The three levels of asepsis are sterilizing, disinfecting, and cleaning. Let's repeat: Hand cleansing is the number one way to prevent the spread of infection.
Standard precautions consist of eight key elements. These include correct hand hygiene, safe cleaning and decontamination, safe handling and disposal of waste and linen, sharps safety, correct use of personal protective clothing, safe handling of blood and body fluids and respiratory hygiene.
The two basic goals of infection control are to protect the patient and health care personnel from infection. Infection control starts with standard precautions. Standard precautions are the methods recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for preventing the transmission of infections.
Hand hygiene. Use of personal protective equipment (e.g., gloves, masks, eyewear). Respiratory hygiene / cough etiquette.
The first step in infection control is hand hygiene.
1-6 Bacteria can be transferred to hands and clothing during bed-making. Therefore, Bloomfield et al. 7 recommend putting on a plastic apron in addition to decontaminating the hands before and after bed-making.
Prevent the spread of infectious disease
- Immunise against infectious diseases.
- Wash and dry your hands regularly and well.
- Stay at home if you are sick.
- Cover coughs and sneezes.
- Clean surfaces regularly.
- Ventilate your home.
- Prepare food safely.
- Practise safe sex.
The four different categories of infectious agents are bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites. When studying these agents, researchers isolate them using certain characteristics: Size of the infectious agent.
Standard precautions are a set of infection control practices used to prevent transmission of diseases that can be acquired by contact with blood, body fluids, non-intact skin (including rashes), and mucous membranes.
Systemic means affecting the entire body, rather than a single organ or body part. For example, systemic disorders, such as high blood pressure, or systemic diseases, such as the flu, affect the entire body. An infection that is in the bloodstream is called a systemic infection.
Routine practices refer to minimum practices that should be used with all clients, patients or residents. Additional precautions refer to specific actions that should be taken with individuals that are at risk of transmitting or acquiring disease.
“Routine Practices,†also known as “Universal Precautions†or “Infection Control Procedures,†refer to practices that help prevent the spread of infections between service providers and their clients, usually in healthcare settings.
The order for removing PPE is Gloves, Apron or Gown, Eye Protection, Surgical Mask. Perform hand hygiene immediately on removal. All PPE should be removed before leaving the area and disposed of as healthcare waste.
providing continence care; changing dressings and caring for open wounds/lesions; and toileting. If direct care is provided in shared activities, the “4 Moments for Hand Hygiene†are to be followed.
Additional Precautions are infection prevention and control precautions and practices required in addition to Routine Practices. They are based on the mode (means) of transmission of the infectious agent: airborne, droplet, and contact.
Airborne precautions are required to protect against airborne transmission of infectious agents. Diseases requiring airborne precautions include, but are not limited to: Measles, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Varicella (chickenpox), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Standard Precautions are used for all patient care. They're based on a risk assessment and make use of common sense practices and personal protective equipment use that protect healthcare providers from infection and prevent the spread of infection from patient to patient.
The principles of routine practices are based on the premise that all patients are potentially infectious, even when asymptomatic, and IPAC routine practices should be used to prevent exposure to blood, body fluids, secretions, excretions, mucous membranes, non-intact skin, or soiled items (PIDAC, 2012).
In 1996, the CDC expanded the concept and changed the term to standard precautions, which integrated and expanded the elements of universal precautions to include contact with all body fluids (except sweat), regardless of whether blood is present.
Infection control prevents or stops the spread of infections in healthcare settings. This site includes an overview of how infections spread, ways to prevent the spread of infections, and more detailed recommendations by type of healthcare setting.
There are three categories of Transmission-Based Precautions: Contact Precautions, Droplet Precautions, and Airborne Precautions.
Infection control prevents or stops the spread of infections in healthcare settings. This site includes an overview of how infections spread, ways to prevent the spread of infections, and more detailed recommendations by type of healthcare setting.
These include standard precautions (hand hygiene, PPE, injection safety, environmental cleaning, and respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette) and transmission-based precautions (contact, droplet, and airborne).
