Essay
Be able to control the spread of infection
- Module
- Unit 5 - Infection control
- Institution
- OCR
This is my assignment that covers P5, 6 and 7. M2 and 3, and finally D1.
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Unit 5, Task 3 ResubP5- Demonstrate methods used to prevent the spread of infection
Infection prevention and control is about minimising the risk and chance of infection spreading in a
health or social care setting. There are a number of different methods used to prevent the spread of
infection and help to protect care practitioners, service users and visitors to these settings from
contracting infections.
It is vital that care practitioners maintain their own personal hygiene as bacteria lives on our bodies
and can easily be spread. Care practitioners should ensure that they wash regularly and use a good
quality soap to wash away the microbes from their bodies after every shift. Care practitioners are
working with individuals who may have infections and as part of their job may pick them up on their
skin. In most care settings the uniform that care practitioners wear a uniform that has short sleeves
and as a consequence they have bare arms which will come into contact with service users and their
infections. By maintaining personal hygiene, they are reducing the risk of unwillingly becoming
carriers of infections.
Care practitioners as part of their personal hygiene should maintain good oral hygiene and clean
their teeth regularly. This means that they will not have pieces of food becoming trapped in between
their teeth and causing an infection. It will also mean that it is a more pleasant experience for the
service users having a conversation with the care practitioner.
Care practitioners with long hair need to ensure that is is tied back when they are in work. This
means that there is less risk of the hair falling out and contaminating a service user’s meal but also
that they are not trailing their hair through the service user’s bodily fluids when they are performing
their duties such as leaning over a service user to move them or provide care. Having washed and
clean hair also means that it won’t smell and any microbes that have attached themselves to the hair
are washed away, reducing the risk of spreading the infection in this way.
Care practitioners need to wash their uniforms after every shift as they will have come into contact
with a range of individuals and infections during their working day. Microbes from a service user’s
bodily fluids could be on the uniform and if not washed a minimum of 60 degrees allow the microbes
to multiply and spread. The nursing and midwifery council recommend that individuals have more
than one uniform so that care practitioners are able to have adequate time to wash their uniforms
for each shift that they have.
, Here I used disinfectant spray to clean the kitchen surfaces, by doing this I was killing any infectious
organisms that may have been living on the surfaces.
Handwashing technique
There are eleven steps to follow in order to wash your hands correctly, this is following NHS
recommendations. The first is to wet your hands with water, then apply enough soap to cover your
hands, rub your hands together. Use one hand to rub the back of the other hand and clean in
between the fingers. Do the same with the other hand. Rub your hands together and clean in
between your fingers. Take rings off to clean your fingers completely, otherwise infection can live
under the rings. Rub the back of your fingers against your palms. Rub your thumb using your other
hand. Do the same with the other hand. Rub the tips of your fingers on the palm of your other hand.
Do the same with the other hand. Rinse your hands with water. Dry your hands completely with a
disposable towel. Then use the disposable towel to turn off the tap, by using the towel, you are
ensuring that you are not picking up any infection that may be on the surface of the tap.
P6- Describe why standard precautions for infection control should be maintained at all times
Standard precautions should be maintained at all times as infections can soon spread and infect
large numbers of individuals within health and social care settings. It then becomes difficult for
health and social care settings to get the infections under control especially when they have
individuals using those services who may be weak and vulnerable and unable to fight off infections.
Standard precautions are incorporated into everyday normal working practices to protect service
users, practitioners and visitors from infection. Blood and bodily fluids such as mucus and urine are
capable of spreading infections, therefore standard precautions help to minimise the risk of infection
spreading.
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