Standard Precautions: Universal Infection Prevention

Standard precautions are infection prevention practices applied to ALL patient care regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status, based on the principle that all blood, body fluids (except sweat), non-intact skin, and mucous membranes may contain transmissible infectious agents. The concept evolved from Universal Precautions (blood and body fluids) and Body Substance Isolation into the current comprehensive approach. The chain of infection requires six links: infectious agent (pathogen), reservoir (where the organism lives), portal of exit (how it leaves the reservoir), mode of transmission (contact, droplet, airborne, vehicle, vector), portal of entry (how it enters the new host), and susceptible host (immunocompromised, chronic disease, extremes of age). Standard precautions interrupt this chain at multiple points: hand hygiene breaks the mode of transmission, PPE prevents portal of entry, and respiratory hygiene/cough etiquette reduces portal of exit. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) affect 1 in 31 hospital patients on any given day, causing approximately 99,000 deaths annually in the US. The most common HAIs are catheter-associated UTIs (CAUTI), central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI), surgical site infections (SSI), and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).