Standard Precautions
Overview
Standard precautions are the baseline infection-control practices applied to EVERY client at every encounter, regardless of diagnosis or presumed infection status. Treat all blood, body fluids (except sweat), non-intact skin, and mucous membranes as potentially infectious. The guiding principle is anticipation: before contact, assess what fluids you might encounter and gear up accordingly. They are the foundation, never the ceiling — transmission-based precautions (contact, droplet, airborne) layer ON TOP for a known or suspected pathogen and never replace standard precautions.
Indications
Core components — applied to all clients:
Technique
PPE doffing order (CDC) — gloves are most contaminated, remove first:
Safe sharps disposal at point of use
- Activate engineered safety device immediatelyat point of use, before any transport
- Walk to sharps containernever recap with two hands
- Deposit needle directly into containerbelow the fill line
During — Monitoring
Match PPE to the procedure's anticipated exposure:
Interpretation
Standard vs transmission-based — additive, never interchangeable:
Standard vs Transmission-Based Precautions
Standard
- Applies to
- Every client, every time
- Trigger
- All body fluids assumed infectious
- Order needed
- No — baseline
- Relationship
- The foundation
Transmission-Based
- Applies to
- Known/suspected specific organism
- Trigger
- Contact, droplet, or airborne pathogen
- Order needed
- Yes — pathogen identified
- Relationship
- Layers on top of standard
Patient Teaching
Clinical Pearl
Standard precautions for everyone, every time — treat all body fluids as infectious, and let transmission-based precautions stack on top, never swap in.