Professional Ethics, Hygiene, and Safety
Domain 2 - Professional Ethics, Hygiene, and Safety
The exam tests three connected ideas: what you owe the client ethically (consent, confidentiality, honesty, scope of practice), how you prevent cross-contamination, and how you keep the workplace physically safe. Most marks are lost on hygiene terminology and on failing to act when a service should be refused.
Ethics in practice
- Take informed consent before any service involving touch, chemicals or heat, and explain what the service can and cannot achieve.
- Keep client records confidential: no sharing of phone numbers, photographs or skin conditions, and no before/after images without written permission.
- Work inside your scope: recognise and refer suspected infections, pigmented lesions, nail discolouration and scalp disease.
- Never promise a cure, never mix products not meant to be mixed, and never sell a service the client's condition makes unsafe.
Hygiene: three levels, three jobs
- Sanitation reduces visible soil and some microbes - soap, water, detergent wiping.
- Disinfection kills most pathogens on non-porous tools and surfaces - quaternary ammonium or 70% alcohol, respecting contact time.
- Sterilisation destroys all microorganisms including spores - autoclave at 121 °C, 15 psi, 15–20 minutes. Porous items that cannot be disinfected - files, buffers, wooden spatulas, cotton, mascara wands, wax strips - must be single-use. Never double-dip a spatula into the wax pot.
Safety
Hand-washing before and after every client, PPE, ventilation in chemical areas, MSDS kept on site, no food at workstations, cables routed away from wet floors, spill control, segregated sharps and chemical waste, and correct posture with adjustable chairs.
Worked example
During a pedicure a metal nipper nicks the client and draws blood. Reasoning: the tool now carries blood, so wiping is not enough. Stop, wear gloves, dress the wound, double-bag the nipper, clean it and sterilise it in an autoclave (disinfection alone will not do for blood), discard the single-use file, disinfect the workstation with a virucidal product, and record the incident.
Traps
- Calling a disinfectant a sterilant, or “sanitising” metal tools.
- Topping up a wax pot instead of replacing wax and liner.
- Waiving a patch test because the client “had one before at another salon”.