Transmission Precautions: Standard Precautions (Nursing)

00:00 Okay, let's look at ways to reduce transmission.

00:03 One of those ways being standard precautions.

00:06 This is a way for us to prevent the spread of disease.

00:09 So first of all, let's look at hand hygiene.

00:12 We talked about earlier how that's the way to break that chain of infection.

00:17 I know it seems simple, but hand hygiene is at the forefront of everything we do before patient contact, during and even after patient contact, we use hand hygiene.

00:29 Next, we're gonna use personal protective equipment, otherwise known as PPE.

00:34 funny name, funny acronym, PPE is use of gloves, gowns, masks, eye goggles.

00:41 There's lots of PPE out there and depending on the disease process, we're gonna modify what we use.

00:48 One thing to think about is the whole respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette.

00:52 So yes, we talk about this, we wish that we would teach this to everybody in the public about coughing into their sleeve, but it is good practice for us to teach our patients and for us as healthcare providers to be cognizant enough.

01:06 Next, we need to consider about how we dispose of our sharps, and sharps safety.

01:10 What we're talking about that is the needles that we use for injection, usually to administer medications to a patient.

01:17 So there's different facets about this sharp safety.

01:20 Typically, there's a protection device to make sure we close the needle when you get done using this or administering a med on the patient.

01:28 We also need to make sure we take that sharps and place it in the appropriate container.

01:33 This may sound silly, but because it's a needle, we can't just throw it in the trash.

01:38 There's body fluids on there, there's medications and that thing can spread disease.

01:44 So we need to make sure we dispose of that properly.

01:47 And let's not forget clean and disinfecting environmental services.

01:52 We can't stress this enough.

01:54 Thank goodness for our staff that is able and well equipped to know which disease and how to properly disinfect that in our healthcare systems.