There are 2 tiers of recommended precautions to prevent the spread of infections in healthcare settings:
Standard Precautions and Transmission-Based Precautions.
Standard Precautions are used for all patient care. They’re based on a risk assessment and make use of common sense practices and personal protective equipment use that protect healthcare providers from infection and prevent the spread of infection from patient to patient.
Transmission-Based Precautions are the second tier of basic infection control and are to be used in addition to Standard Precautions for patients who may be infected or colonized with certain infectious agents for which additional precautions are needed to prevent infection transmission.
Standard precautions include:
This is a gathering of resources that are relevant to washing one's hands. Hygiene and cleanliness are one of the most important duties that a person in the health care field can perform. Proper hand washing ensures that germs and the spread of disease is kept to a minimum.
The link is for the CDC Webasite on Hand Hygiene in Healthcare setting. Taken from the page description,
"Hand Hygiene in Healthcare Settings provides healthcare workers and patients with a variety of resources including guidelines for providers, patient empowerment materials, the latest technological advances in hand hygiene adherence measurement, frequently asked questions, and links to promotional and educational tools published by the WHO, universities, and health departments."
Wash 'Em Video
Video from Jefferson Hospital..."At Jefferson University Hospitals, we take preventing infections seriously. Our latest effort to boost our hand washing is a video we created called "Wash 'Em." Watch our staff dance around the Hospital while showing the importance of hand washing. You'll be singing our song all day!"
"The Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings provides health-care workers (HCWs) with a review of data regarding handwashing and hand antisepsis in health-care settings."