Standard Precautions

As a caregiver, your job is to break the chain of infection. Understanding and following standard precautions will protect you and the people you care for from infectious diseases. Standard precautions include the following:

Hand hygiene
Using appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, masks, respirators, gowns, and eyewear
Respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette
Sharps safety
Safe injection practices
Properly cleaning/sterilizing instruments and devices
Cleaning and disinfecting the environment

You must follow standard precautions every time you provide care for every client.

Infection Control from the Client’s Viewpoint

Wearing gloves and other infection control practices limits your physical contact with the people you care for, and this can interfere with a client’s need for connection and emotional support. They might feel dirty, lonely, or isolated. You need to be sensitive to a client’s feelings, but you must always follow standard precautions. Communicate with the client about why these practices are important to their health and well-being. Assure them standard precautions are for their own safety.

Hand Hygiene

Hand hygiene means cleaning your hands by handwashing with soap and water or using alcohol-based hand rub. Your hands can pick up germs from every person, surface, and object you touch. Without proper hand hygiene, your hands quickly spread germs.

Hand hygiene is the single most important thing you can do to control the spread of infection. The CDC estimates that 2 million care recipients get an infection from healthcare providers every year. About 90,000 people die from these infections.

When to Clean Your Hands

Germs are too small to see. Even if your hands look clean, they can spread infections. You must make hand hygiene a constant part of your daily activity.

Clean your hands at the following times:

Upon arriving at work
When entering a resident’s room/apartment; before providing hands-on resident care
Before putting on gloves
After removing gloves
Before leaving a resident’s room/apartment; after providing hands-on resident care
Before preparing food
Before and after eating
After using the restroom
After touching potentially contaminated items
After blowing your nose, sneezing, coughing, or touching your face
After smoking
After petting/touching animals
Before leaving work at the end of your shift