Infection Control
How Infection Control has Changed Nursing Infection control plays a major role in any healthcare workers daily routine. The nurse plays a critical role in preventing and controlling infectious diseases. Currently health care workers have an abundance of scientific knowledge about pathogenic organisms and their transmission from one person to another. Methods to control the spread of the microorganisms are standardized in recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In nursing, measures to prevent the transmission of infectious microorganisms from patient to patient become a significant component of care. This prevention is achieved through the practice of medical asepsis and standard precautions. Standard precautions include universal precautions and nosocomial infection. Universal precautions were based on the concept that all blood and body fluids that might be contaminated with blood should be treated as infectious because patients with bloodborne infections can be asymptomatic or unaware they are infected. The relevance of universal precautions to other aspects of disease transmission was recognized, and in 1996, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) expanded the concept and changed the term to standard precautions*. Standard precautions integrate and expand the elements of universal precautions into a standard of care designed to protect health-care personnel and patients from pathogens that can be spread by blood or any other body fluid, excretion, or secretion.