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Hi. Welcome to our video series on infectious disease precautions.
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In this video series, we'll take a look at the differences between contact, droplet, and airborne precautions.
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Now, we're gonna start with an easy question. What are precautions in health care?
If you had to come up with a definition, how would you describe them?
Well, precautions are very specific procedures.
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The goal is to prevent the transmission of infectious microorganisms.
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Think of it like these three circles that you see on your screen.
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There's contact, droplet, and airborne.
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Now, it can be very difficult to maintain the airborne precautions.
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It requires extra special equipment but we'll get to more of that later.
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Keep in mind, these are precautions are transmission based.
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That means if a disease is passed by contact, then we use contact precautions.
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If it's passed by droplets, that's why we use droplet precautions.
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I know you're getting the idea as we go through this.
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So, when we use those names, contact, droplet, and airborne,
that just refers to the way the diseases we're trying to prevent from spreading normally spread.
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Are you ready for another question?
Let's look at what's the difference between universal or standard precautions and transmission precautions.
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Alright, so, on the screen, you see a picture of transmission precautions.
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How are these different than universal or standard precautions?
Well, let's walk through what universal or standard precautions are.
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Universal or standard precautions are the basic level of precautions that are of the minimum standard for all patients.
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So, anyone who's being taken care, these are four really important points
that all of us follow when you follow universal or standard precautions.
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The idea is we wanna reduce the risk of transmission of microorganisms while you're taking care of the patient.
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That means from the patient to me as the health care provider,
for me as the healthcare provider to the patient, and to other patients.
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So, first up, it's under all precautions is hand hygiene.
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Everyone has to practice good hand hygiene.
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You wanna have clean hands when you walk into the room
and you also wanna wash your hands after you're taking care of the patient.
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The second one is respiratory hygiene or cough etiquette.
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That means you wanna be careful about where you're coughing.
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So, if we teach little kids wanna go and do germs with the five year olds which is one of my favorite things to do with student nurses.
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We teach them to cough into their elbows so they end up covering that. That's cough etiquette.
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They can also use a Kleenex or a tissue when they're going to cough.
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So, first up, hand hygiene, that's for everybody.
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Respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette is the second category.
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The third one is personal protective equipment.
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Now, as healthcare providers, anytime we run the risk of exposing ourselves to patient body fluids,
you wanna make sure that you have gloves on.
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And we'll talk about more in detail with the specific transmission protocols, what extra PPE you'll need to wear.
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But standard, universal precautions require that everyone should wear gloves when interacting
and caring for a patient when you might be exposed to body fluids.
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So, we've got hand hygiene, respiratory and cough etiquette,
personal protective equipment or PPE and the last one is be careful with the sharps.
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Sharps need to be safely disposed of in an official sharps container.
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Now, look at the one that we have on the screen there, do you see what it's got?
That's a needle heading in for disposal. You don't ever want to recap your needle unless it's a very specialized safety cap.
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But don't pick a cap up and take your hypodermic end, put them back on.
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You really risk sticking yourself cuz sometimes, that needle will go back through the cap if you recap a needle.
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So, you wanna dispose of that sharp right into a sharps container.
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Now, they have a special lid that you can see on the side there.
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When it's full or not completely full, about three quarters full, you slide that lid over and change it out for a new one.
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So, that's universal or standard precautions in a nutshell.
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Hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, and cough etiquette, personal protective equipment
which for now is gonna mainly be gloves and the fourth one is disposing of sharps safely.