Personal Hygiene and Fitness to Work
What this domain tests
The exam tests whether you can apply personal hygiene controls and the fitness-to-work rules in a real kitchen: when to exclude staff, what to report, and how hands, clothing and habits transfer contamination.
Hand hygiene
Hands are the most common vehicle. Wash with soap and warm running water, then dry thoroughly with disposable paper or a hand dryer. Steps: wet, soap, rub palms, backs, between fingers, thumbs, fingertips and wrists, rinse, dry. Wash before starting work, after toilet, after handling raw food, after waste, after breaks, after cleaning, after coughing/sneezing, and after touching phones or face. Alcohol gel is an adjunct, not a substitute, and is ineffective on visibly soiled or greasy hands.
Fitness to work
Report to the manager: diarrhoea, vomiting, fever, sore throat with fever, infected skin lesion, discharge from ear/eye/nose, or jaundice. Exclude from food handling and food-handling areas if suffering diarrhoea and/or vomiting; return only 48 hours after symptoms stop. E. coli O157, Salmonella (some cases), typhoid and hepatitis A have longer exclusion and require medical clearance. Cuts must be covered with a waterproof, detectable dressing and a glove if on the hand.
Worked example
A prep chef reports diarrhoea at the start of a shift. The manager should send them home, not move them to "dry store only", because they may still enter food areas or use shared toilets. The chef should not return until 48 hours after the last episode. The manager checks who covered their tasks, cleans shared contact surfaces, and reviews handwashing.
Traps
- Letting a food handler return 48 hours after starting symptoms.
- Using gloves instead of handwashing; gloves contaminate like hands.
- Allowing a colleague with vomiting to "just do the till" in an open kitchen.
- Treating a plaster as sufficient without a detectable blue dressing.