Infection Control, Hygiene, and Public Health Requirements
This domain tests the routine practices that protect clients and the specific failures that generate complaints - and occasionally outbreaks.
Between every client
- Hand hygiene before and after contact, and after touching anything contaminated.
- Fresh linens for each client: sheets, face cradle covers, towels. Launder in hot water with detergent and dry thoroughly.
- Sanitize the table, bolster, face cradle frame, and any surface the client contacted.
- Never double-dip into a lotion or gel container; use a pump, a single-use portion, or a clean spatula, and never return used product to the container.
- Clean and disinfect tools - stones, cups, gua sha, rollers - between clients per manufacturer directions.
Exposure control
Maintain a written bloodborne pathogen exposure control plan, use gloves when contact with non-intact skin, blood, or body fluids is reasonably anticipated, and dispose of contaminated waste properly. Cover your own open lesions.
Illness and skin conditions
Do not work when you have a communicable illness or fever. Postpone treatment over contagious skin conditions (ringworm, impetigo, scabies, shingles in the acute phase, infected wounds) and refer. Report notifiable diseases as Oregon public health law requires, and follow county environmental health requirements for your premises.
Worked example
A client arrives with an angry, raised ring on the forearm. You do not massage over or around it. You explain the concern, reschedule, disinfect the room, and launder the linens the client touched - even though no treatment occurred.
Traps
- Thinking gloves replace handwashing.
- Reusing a towel that 'looked clean.'
- Working through a cold because the client insisted.
- Using the same lotion pump directly on two clients' skin.