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Abstract
Isolation is a concept that includes all methods to prevent the transmission of infection and to ensure the safety of patients, family members, visitors, and healthcare workers in healthcare settings. There are two tiers of isolation precautions, standard precautions and transmission-based precautions. Standard precautions are intended to be applied to the care of all patients in all healthcare settings, regardless of the suspected or confirmed presence of an infectious agent. Implementation of standard precautions constitutes the primary strategy, including hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette, use of personal protective equipment depending on the anticipated exposure, safe injection, patient placement, care of the environment and instruments, and worker safety, for the prevention of healthcare-associated transmission of infectious agents among patients and healthcare personnel. Transmission-based precautions are for patients who are known or suspected to be infected or colonized with infectious agents, including certain epidemiologically important pathogens, which require additional control measures to effectively prevent transmission. There are three categories of transmission-based precautions; contact precautions, droplet precautions, and airborne precautions. Transmission-based precautions are used when the routes of transmission are not completely interrupted using standard precautions alone. For some diseases that have multiple routes of transmission, more than one transmission-based precautions category may be used. When used either alone or in combination, they are always used in addition to standard precautions.
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References
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