Enhancing the Quality of Life at Home

Infection Control

Standard Precautions

Standard precautions require everyone, from daycare workers and teachers to accountants and auto mechanics, to assume that anyone’s blood and body fluids may carry hepatitis viruses, HIV or other bloodborne infections.

No child is too young to learn health safety. The following is an approach you can take with children under five or six. To help kids understand how invisible germs can pass from one person to the next, put glitter on your child’s hands and let him/her go to the bathroom, play with family members and pick up a cracker (without actually eating it). Then, go back to the beginning of the glitter journey and walk around the house following the trail of glitter. This will help demonstrate to your children how they can pass germs to each other without knowing it.

It’s important to teach children never to reach out and touch another person’s blood or body fluid. One way to help them understand is to ask them if they would touch someone else’s poop or nose gunk. Most kids will say an emphatic “no.” Once you get that all-important “no” response, explain that blood is very personal and they should never touch anyone else’s blood. Reference: www.pkids.org

• Standard Precautions carries a blanket assumption that anyone-rich or poor, fat or thin, young or old-may be infected with a virus.

• Standard precautions require you to always have a barrier between any infectious substance and your skin, eyes, gums, or the inside of your nose.

For more information visit: www.cdc.gov

Hand Hygiene

According to APIC (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology) an estimated 1.2 million infections occur annually in approximately 8 million adult and pediatric home health care patients in the U.S. Lorian has developed a hand hygiene program in order to prevent health care associated infection. We encourage you to follow the hygiene program as well.

Hand hygiene is the single most important strategy to reduce the risk of transmitting organisms from one person to another.

When should you wash your hands?

• Before, during, and after preparing food

• Before eating food

• Before and after caring for someone who is sick

• Before and after treating a cut or wound

• After using the toilet

• After changing diapers or cleaning up a child who has used the toilet

• After blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing

• After touching an animal or animal waste

• After touching garbage

What is the right way to wash your hands?

• Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold) and apply soap.

• Rub your hands together to make a lather and scrub them well. Be sure to scrub the backs of your hands, between your fingers, and under your nails.

• Continue rubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds. Need a timer? Hum the "Happy Birthday" song from beginning to end twice.

• Rinse your hands well under running water.

• Dry your hands using a clean towel or air dry them.

What if I don’t have soap and clean, running water?

Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to reduce the number of germs on them. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers can quickly reduce the number of germs on hands in some situations, but sanitizers do not eliminate all types of germs.

Hand sanitizers are not effective when hands are visibly dirty.

How do you use hand sanitizers?

• Apply the product to the palm of one hand.

• Rub your hands together.

• Rub the product over all surfaces of your hands and fingers until your hands are dry.

Reference from CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing