Infection Prevention in the Home
Published: 05 September 2023
Published: 05 September 2023
Infection control is integral to the safety and quality of any healthcare environment.
While home and community care settings do not necessarily present the same infection risks as acute care, they have their own unique set of challenges that must be considered by staff and organisations (Health.vic 2012).
Protecting yourself and your clients from healthcare-associated infections requires a comprehensive understanding of infection control principles and how to apply them to a home environment.
A client’s home may be a ‘workplace’, but it is also a private residence that is not subject to the same regulations as hospitals, aged care facilities and other healthcare environments. The layout and condition of the home, the equipment and the client themselves will vary depending on the location you are visiting.
Inevitably, it is difficult to predict the exact hazards you will encounter. Even if you make appropriate preparations and bring all the equipment you need, you may not know exactly what kind of environment you are working in until you arrive.
There are several unique challenges posed by home care environments:
(Ventyv 2019; Moore 2019)
Being able to successfully control and prevent infections relies on having a basic understanding of how infectious diseases spread. Ensure you understand:
For more information about infectious agents and the chain of infection, refer to Infectious Diseases: How Do You Break the Chain?
As with any healthcare setting, it is essential to always follow standard precautions when delivering home care services. Standard precautions are the minimum level of infection prevention and control that should be used for all clients, regardless of whether or not they appear unwell. Standard precautions operate under the assumption that every person is potentially infectious (NHMRC 2022).
Standard precautions include:
(NHMRC 2022)
Note: See the links above for more in-depth information about each component of standard precautions.
Transmission-based precautions are used in addition to standard precautions when a client is suspected or known to have a certain infectious illness, and standard precautions alone may be insufficient in preventing transmission. The exact strategies implemented will be individually tailored, depending on the infectious agent and its mode of transmission (NHMRC 2022).
Staff and clients may be exposed to biological hazards in the home through contact with contaminated surfaces, ingestion of pathogens or inhalation of infectious aerosol droplets (DMIRS 2019). This can occur during:
(Workplace Health and Safety Queensland 2018)
In order to reduce the risk of infection transmission in the home, you should:
(Workplace Health and Safety Queensland 2018; CEC 2020)
Educating clients about the importance of infection prevention is part of patient-centred care and may encourage clients to uphold infection prevention strategies in their homes. You should:
(NHMRC 2022)
Client homes are less controlled than other healthcare settings and therefore pose unique challenges for infection control and prevention.
In order to protect yourself and your clients from infectious diseases, ensure you have a sound understanding of infection control principles and their role in home environments.
Question 1 of 3
True or false: When transmission-based precautions are required, standard precautions stil need to be employed.