What Do You Need to Know About Infection Control?

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Infection control is extremely important when it comes to health care delivery. This discipline refers to both sophisticated and simple methods, including the use of high-level disinfectants for the surgical instruments or the simple hand washing procedure. These measures must be implemented in every health care facility in order to prevent the transmission of disease throughout the community or in the health care setting. Infection control stops the spread of bacteria and microorganisms from staff member to patient, from patient to staff member and from patient to patient.

Definition

According to the Royal College of Nursing, the infection control includes applying the microbiology in practice. The infections and diseases can be triggered by various factors such as prions, bacteria, viruses and fungi. Some of the most common infections are the skin and bone infections, the urinary tract infections, the blood infections, the respiratory infections and the wound infections.

However, patients must know that there are infections that are not transmissible. On the other side, there are diseases and bacteria like norovirus, influenza and C. difficile that can immediately spread from patient to patient leading to serious implications and complications for the health care facilities. The health professionals and the patients particularly must understand how the infections appear, occur and spread, to prevent the infections. Moreover, in a hospital or another healthcare organization, prevention is the primary objective for the healthcare assistants, midwives, nurses and doctors.

Who Is in Charge of the Infection Control Procedures?

Everyone is responsible for applying and respecting the infection control methods. Still, there should be a nominated team or person in every health care setting. This team or person is responsible for making sure that the infection control procedures and policies are respected and followed correctly. However, everyone who enters in contact with the patients must adhere to these procedures. This includes even the patient’s family and friends who come to visit.

Using the Standard Precautions

In order to support the infection control practices, a few standard precautions have been created in order to prevent spreading of bacteria. Precautions begin with good hygiene practices such as frequent hand washing. At the same time, doctors, surgeons, nurses and other health care professionals must appropriately use the gloves and other protective equipment including overalls, eye protection, gowns, aprons and masks.

The cleaning agents must be appropriately used and waste, especially the toxic waste, must be disposed, stored and collected in a safe manner. Moreover, the non-disposable equipment must be sterilized, disinfected and cleaned correctly, to eliminate and kill the bacteria, viruses and microorganisms. The standard precautions also recommend the usage of disposable equipment whenever it’s available and applicable. Finally, the syringes, needles and other sharp instruments, whether disposable or not, must be used in safe conditions.

All these procedures related to infection control are meant to prevent the growth and spread of all types of infections. Thus, since there are diseases that may take months to show any symptoms or signs, all the body substances of all the patients are believed to potentially be infection sources.