Ms Carolyn Clissold1
1Wellington Hospital
Standard Precautions has been the cornerstone policy for Infection, Prevention and Control (IPC) for decades, yet health professionals often cannot name more than 1-2 key aspects of it. Standard Precautions, ie “the minimum infection prevention practices that apply to all patient care, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status of the patient, in any setting where health care is delivered. These practices are designed to both protect health care workers and prevent health care workers from spreading infections among patients.” (CDC) . In the COVID age Standard Precautions have failed to deliver and needs to adapt, as it has many time before, to the new health care situation that COVID-19 presents.
This talk will span some key historical events of IPC that have helped inform Standard Precautions, thus providing a rationale and context for the procedures there in. Then discuss the critical failure of Standard Precautions in the COVID age and recommendations for new inclusions in a Standard Precautions of the future. Adaptations like universal mask wearing by health care workers, compulsory vaccination and air handling improvements will be some of the recommendations discussed. The influence of the hierarchy of controls models will also be included.
Biography: Carolyn Clissold is a Clinical Nurse Specialist with 15 years experience in IPC at Wellington Hospital, NZ.
She is the past Chair of the Infection Prevention and Control Nurses College for the NZ Nurses Organisation.
She has represented IPC nationally on the NZ Ministry of Health’s COVID Technical Advisory Group and Healthcare Antimicrobial Resistance Committee.