Infection Prevention In Health Care

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Recommended: Chapter 5 infection control prinicples and practices

With a rise in Health care associated infections, it is necessary for health care professionals to take special precautions to control infection. HAI’s are infections acquired in a health care setting that previously didn’t exist before being admitted into the hospital. Today there is a higher risk of infection than ever before, due to a high elderly population, a growing AIDS population, and chemotherapy. HAI’s are the number one problem seen in patients. Therefore its obvious special precautions must be taken to avoid the spread of infection including treating blood, cuts, or open woods as if its infected, washing your hands before putting on gloves and after taking off your gloves, not touching clean surfaces while your hands are contaminated, wearing gloves if there is a chance you’re going to be touching blood or other secretions, bagging all contaminated items, and cleaning items that may be contaminated with infectious waste.
Before the advancements of infection control, surgery was only used for life threatening conditions, because, if the patient survived the surgery it was almost inevitable that infection would occur. Luckily in the 19th century advancements in infection control lowered the risk of surgical intervention, and surgeries became a lot more common. Infection was the main contributor to infection rates, so until the 19th century surgery was only used as a last resort. In the early 1500’s Hieronymus Fracastorius stated that maybe infections were caused by invisible living seeds. He described three ways of transmission direct contact, indirect contact with fomites, and airborne transmission. Later Amboise pare believed that infection was also caused by the environment. Pare noted how important it was to have a ...

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...gown by first unfastening the bottom string and then the top. After untying both strings pull away from the neck and shoulders from the inside of the gown only, it should easily come off. After the inside out gown is off discard of it in a proper waste container as well. The final step is to remove your respirator, and remember that the front is all contaminated so you must grab the strings from behind and pull forward to remove the mask, and then discard the respirator in a waste container.
As health care professionals it is necessary for us to take special precautions in protecting ourselves and others from infection. With increased risk of infection, it is even harder to protect ourselves. So knowing the proper steps of maintain good hygiene and sanitation is a must. Today Infection control is as important as knowing about the diseases, and conditions themselves.

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