Health care associated infections (HAIs) are the most common complication affecting patients in Australian hospitals, with about 200,000 HAIs a year causing unnecessary pain and suffering and prolonging hospital stays at great cost to the health system.

Standard and transmission-based precautions are crucial to the prevention and control of HAIs, and all staff should know when and how to apply them. All health care settings should also implement individually appropriate strategies to manage the risk of HAIs being spread or acquired by all staff, patients and visitors.

This tutorial details what standard precautions are and when and how to implement them. It is suitable for all health care workers and is based on the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care Australian Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Infection in Healthcare, 2010. [1]

Transmission-based precautions are applied in addition to standard precautions if patients are known or suspected to be infected by agents that may not be contained by standard precautions alone. This tutorial does not deal with transmission-based precautions, nor does it deal with the reprocessing of reusable medical equipment and instruments. These two topics are the subject of separate infection control tutorials.