Infection Prevention and Control
Infection prevention questions test standard precautions for every patient, transmission-based precautions for some, safe waste handling and post-exposure action.
Standard precautions
Treat every patient as potentially infectious. Perform hand hygiene at the five moments: before touching a patient, before a clean procedure, after body-fluid exposure, after touching a patient, and after touching the patient's surroundings. Hand hygiene takes 20–30 seconds with alcohol-based rub or 40–60 seconds with soap and water; soap and water are required when hands are visibly soiled or after caring for a patient with Clostridioides difficile.
Additional precautions
- Contact: gloves and gown, dedicated equipment, cohorting - diarrhoea, scabies, resistant wound organisms.
- Droplet: surgical mask within one metre - influenza, meningococcal disease, whooping cough.
- Airborne: N95 respirator, negative pressure if available - tuberculosis, measles, varicella.
Waste and sharps
Sharps go directly into a puncture-proof container at the point of use; never recap. Segregate infectious waste at source according to the national colour code.
Worked example
A nurse sustains a needle-stick injury from a patient with unknown HIV status. Action: wash the wound with soap and running water without squeezing, report immediately, take baseline bloods, and start HIV post-exposure prophylaxis as soon as possible - ideally within two hours and no later than 72 hours - after assessing the source. Check hepatitis B vaccination status at the same time.
Traps
Wearing gloves as a substitute for hand hygiene; recapping needles; assuming an undiagnosed patient needs no standard precautions; delaying prophylaxis while waiting for a source result.