Standard Precautions

00:01 Hi. Welcome to our video series on infectious disease precautions.

00:05 In this video series, we'll take a look at the differences between contact, droplet, and airborne precautions.

00:12 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.

00:25 The goal is to prevent the transmission of infectious microorganisms.

00:29 Think of it like these three circles that you see on your screen.

00:33 There's contact, droplet, and airborne.

00:37 Now, it can be very difficult to maintain the airborne precautions.

00:41 It requires extra special equipment but we'll get to more of that later.

00:45 Keep in mind, these are precautions are transmission based.

00:49 That means if a disease is passed by contact, then we use contact precautions.

00:54 If it's passed by droplets, that's why we use droplet precautions.

00:58 I know you're getting the idea as we go through this.

01:00 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.

01:10 Are you ready for another question? Let's look at what's the difference between universal or standard precautions and transmission precautions.

01:20 Alright, so, on the screen, you see a picture of transmission precautions.

01:23 How are these different than universal or standard precautions? Well, let's walk through what universal or standard precautions are.

01:32 Universal or standard precautions are the basic level of precautions that are of the minimum standard for all patients.

01:40 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.

01:50 The idea is we wanna reduce the risk of transmission of microorganisms while you're taking care of the patient.

01:55 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.

02:03 So, first up, it's under all precautions is hand hygiene.

02:08 Everyone has to practice good hand hygiene.

02:11 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.

02:18 The second one is respiratory hygiene or cough etiquette.

02:23 That means you wanna be careful about where you're coughing.

02:25 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.

02:32 We teach them to cough into their elbows so they end up covering that. That's cough etiquette.

02:39 They can also use a Kleenex or a tissue when they're going to cough.

02:43 So, first up, hand hygiene, that's for everybody.

02:46 Respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette is the second category.

02:50 The third one is personal protective equipment.

02:54 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.

03:03 And we'll talk about more in detail with the specific transmission protocols, what extra PPE you'll need to wear.

03:10 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.

03:21 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.

03:31 Sharps need to be safely disposed of in an official sharps container.

03:37 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.

03:47 But don't pick a cap up and take your hypodermic end, put them back on.

03:52 You really risk sticking yourself cuz sometimes, that needle will go back through the cap if you recap a needle.

03:58 So, you wanna dispose of that sharp right into a sharps container.

04:02 Now, they have a special lid that you can see on the side there.

04:05 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.

04:12 So, that's universal or standard precautions in a nutshell.

04:16 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.