Infection Prevention And Control (IPC): A Case Study

Health and safety at work act 1974 and 1992: This act is put into place for all places of employments. All employees have a duty of care to provide for the staff, ensuring that all equipment is safe and it does not have any risk. Employee, staff and volunteers have to take care of themselves and others around them.

The main features of the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) is that it requires certain health and safety procedures to be maintained in a health and social care setting, for example, the act explains that there must be, safe operation and maintenance of working equipment, plant and system, maintenance of safe access to the workplace, safe use, handling and storage of dangerous/hazardous substances, training of staff to ensure that there is health and safety, to provide welfare for staff at work.

Hand hygiene practices are important thing to infection prevention and control practice. As health provider especially ED staff or front liner, to follow hand washing protocols is necessary in any situation. According Practice Standard (2009) four major elements to preventing practice; hand washing, protective barriers, care of equipment and health practice of nurse. Cite from Health Promotion Agency for Northern Ireland, scientists has found around 45% of infections can be prevented by washing hands regularly. MOH (2010) increasing in hand-washing compliance by

Procedures and systems relevant to the prevention and control of infection are following companies’ policies and procedures which relate to correct hand washing procedure, wearing correct PPE for example gloves, aprons and protective clothing, the correct disposal of waste and using the correct cleaning equipment when cleaning spillages, surfaces, equipment, etc.

Major injuries including fractures, dislocations, loss of sight, poisoning, unconsciousness and any injury resulting in someone needing resuscitation, any incidents leading to someone having to take a leave of absence from work for more than three days, Reportable injuries such as hepatitis, HIV, meningitis and tuberculosis. Or any potential dangerous occurrences that may not have lead to injury or disease such as fires, needle-stick injury and collapse of lifting equipment. Reporting all these incidents allows the council or HSE to investigate why and how they occurred and ways in which to prevent them happening again in the future.

Learning outcome 2: Understand legislation and policies relating to prevention and control of infections For all legislation and policies – key points, mandatory or relevant training, impact on organisation, impact on day to day work, implications of failing to meet legislative or regulatory requirements in terms of legal penalties, organisation reputation and individual safety Current legislation, to include: The Public Health (Control of Diseases) Act, 1984 The Public Health (Infectious Diseases) Regulations, 1998 Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974 The Management of Health and Safety at Work Act (amended 1994) Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) 2002 Food Safety Act, 1990 Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences (RIDDOR) 1995 The Environmental Protection (Duty of Care) Regulations 1991 Health Protection Agency Bill 2004 Other new/current legislation that affects infection control Hazardous waste regulations 2005 The Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulation (Department of Health, 1995)

The employer has a responsibility to follow the regulation which is known as the ‘Health and Safety at Work Act 1974’. This is An Act to make further provision for securing the health, safety and

Reporting of Injuries,Diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations of 1995 requires the reporting of work-related accidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences. The Act applies to all work related activities, but not to all work related incidents. The objective of the regulations is to enable the enforcing authorities to identify where and how risks arise and to investigate serious accidents so as to prevent them from occurring in the future and thus providing a safer work environment. The enforcing authorities can then help and advise you on preventive action to reduce injury, ill health and accidental loss,the main points of our own policy that relate to this are:

The main features of the health and safety at work act is that it provides a framework for ensuring that all employees are in and a health and safety environment. The employer and staff have duty to ensure the health and safety not only of themselves but also other persons who may frequent the premises, such as children and their parents. Employees are due undertake an approved first aid course and a named person should be appointed to take charge in the event of an accident. As well as this, properly stocked first aid kit should be available – no medication should be kept in the first aid kit. In regards to a healthcare setting, this ensures that children and elderly are looked after as they may not be able to independently.

The health and safety at work Act 1974, this the primary piece of legislation covering the work related health and safety in the united kingdom . it set s out a lot of employers’ responsibilities for health and safety at work

The main piece of legislation affecting the management of health and safety in educational establishments across all sectors is the Health and Safety at Work, etc Act 1974 (HSWA). This Act provides a framework for

Health and Safety at Work Act 1974- This act is to protect the employees from any danger or risks, it’s the employers duty to see this threw in the

Healthcare related with infections account for almost 80,000 deaths per year in the United States. Significantly the healthcare department supports hand hygiene decreases the transmission of healthcare associated pathogens and the incidence of healthcare associated infections. These days hand hygiene and improvements in healthcare associated infections is inflexible to verify in health care. World health organization (WHO) highly suggested that we need to practice hand hygiene. This will reduce infection in the health care facility. Compliance with hand hygiene practices among health care workers has generally very short. The main objective of these quality assurance programme is to prevent infection and awareness of the importance of hand hygiene in health care. Hand hygiene is a unlike the way of thinking about safety and patient care and includes everyone in the hospital together with patients and health care providers. Effective hand hygiene practices in hospitals play a key role in improving patient and provider safety and in preventing the spread of health care associated infections.

In 1974, the Health and Safety at Work Act, also referred to as HSWA, was put in place to make further terms for securing the health, safety and welfare of a person within a working environment, making it the prime piece of legislation to cover the occupational health and safety in Great Britain. Everybody within a workforce has the duty to obey the act in order to promote, stimulate and encourage high standards of health and safety so that themselves, their employees, their fellow peers and the members of the public feel safe. Employees must be provided with the appropriate clothing and equipment for their own safety and protection. Additionally, all machinery that is used, if needed, should be of high standards and regularly checked to make sure that it is still suitable for use.

Although there are huge amounts of HCAI problems (REF), staff continually fail to carry out basic hand hygiene. This leads to diminished quality of care and patient safety.