Reduced Risk of Infection

Hospital acquired infections (HAI) are those infections obtained during the patient's stay in the hospital. They structure a significant overall general medical issue regardless of advances in our understanding and control of these infections. The best medical care on the planet can be useless if patients get additional and/or different infections from the ones they already have.

HAI incorporate related diseases which happen with the healthcare professional because of related risks. Wherever these infection starts, it is without a doubt the main obligation of each member of the healthcare team to do to do everything to ensure that patients are taken cared of to achieve back their health as fast as could reasonably be expected and as free from HAI as possible.

A major reason for transmission of infection in hospitals is because of the lack of personal hygiene with some of the healthcare professional, especially due to improper hand washing, improper disposal of sharp instruments and improper use of personal protective equipment. Every healthcare professional plays a vital part in helping to minimize the risk of cross infection – for example, by making certain that hands are properly washed, the clinical environment is as clean as possible, ensuring knowledge and skills are continually updated and by educating patients and visitors

THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF INFECTION PREVENTION AND CONTROL (STANDARD PRECAUTIONS)

Standard precautions (formerly known as universal precautions) underpin routine safe practice, protecting both staff and clients from infection. By applying standard precautions at all times and to all patients, best practice becomes second nature and the risks of infection are minimized. They include:

• Achieving optimum hand hygiene
• Using personal protective equipment
• Safe handling and disposal of sharps
• Safe handling and disposal of clinical waste
• Managing blood and bodily fluids
• Decontaminating equipment
• Achieving and maintaining a clean clinical environment
• Appropriate use of indwelling devices
• Managing accidents
• Good communication – with other health care workers, patients and visitors
• Training/education.

INFECTION CONTROL MEASURES AMONG INTERNS/HOUSE SURGEONS IN TEACHING HOSPITALS

The differences in level of development and availability of resources, variations in organizational factors such as education, training, guidelines and individual factors (e.g. knowledge, experience and practice) have been shown as determinants of adherence to infection control. 

Factors influencing practice on infection control measures for medical interns are: 

• Knowledge and perception on practices of infection control measures 
• Hand washing practice before and after patient examination
• Utilization of surgical mask during exposure to patients with air-borne infection
• Utilization of latex rubber gloves during handling infectious materials
• Practice of needle recapping before discarding
• Prevention of antibiotic-resistant organisms in the health care settings 
• Utilizes four strategies to increase awareness and encourage the best practices for antibiotic use and interventional programs to prevent resistance: prevent infection, diagnose and treat infection effectively, use antimicrobials wisely, and prevent transmission.

Preventing Health Care–Associated Infections

The event and bothersome entanglements from medicinal services related contaminations (HAIs) have been very much perceived in the writing throughout the previous quite a few years. The event of HAIs keeps on heightening at a disturbing rate. HAIs initially alluded to those diseases related with confirmation in an intense consideration emergency clinic (some time ago called a nosocomial contamination), yet the term presently applies to diseases gained in the continuum of settings where people get medicinal services (e.g., long haul care, home consideration, mobile consideration). These unforeseen contaminations create over the span of human services treatment and result in noteworthy patient sicknesses and death (morbidity and mortality); prolong the duration of medical clinic stays; necessitate additional diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, which generate added costs to those already incurred by the patient’s underlying disease. HAIs are viewed as a bothersome result, and as some are preventable, they are viewed as a pointer of the nature of patient consideration, an unfavorable occasion, and a patient well being issue.

Patient Risk Factors for Health Care–Associated Infections

Transmission of infection within a health care setting requires three elements: 

1.  a source of infecting microorganisms
2.  a susceptible host
3.  a means of transmission for the microorganism to the host.

Means of Transmission

Among patients and health care personnel, microorganisms are spread to others through four common routes of transmission: 

• Contact (direct and indirect)
• Respiratory droplets 
• Airborne spread
• Vectorborne transmissions (from mosquitoes, fleas, and other vermin)

Importance of Hand Hygiene