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Specimens, including blood, blood products, and body fluids, obtained from all patients should be considered hazardous and potentially infected with transmissible agents.
Handwashing should be performed before and after patient contact; after removing gloves; and immediately if hands are grossly contaminated with blood.
Gloves should be worn when hands are likely to come in contact with blood or body fluids.
Gowns, protective eyewear, and masks should be worn when splashing, splattering, or aerosolization of blood or body fluids is likely to occur.
Sharp objects ("sharps") should be handled with great care and disposed of in impervious receptacles.
Needles should never be manipulated, bent, broken, or recapped.
Blood spills should be handled via initial absorption of spill with disposable towels, cleaning area with soap and water, followed by disinfecting area with 1:10 solution of household bleach.
Contaminated reusable equipment should be decontaminated using heat sterilization, or when heat is impractical, using a mycobactericidal cleanser.
Pocket masks or mechanical ventilation devices should be available in areas where cardiopulmonary resuscitation procedures are likely.
Health care workers with open lesions or weeping dermatitis should avoid direct patient contact and should not handle contaminated equipment.
Private rooms are not required for routine care; select circumstances, however, such as the presence of concomitant transmissible opportunistic disease, may warrant respiratory, enteric, or contact isolation. |
