In recent years, the term isolation has evolved to characterize a process designed to manage the healthcare environment. Modern isolation techniques incorporate a broad-based theory that addresses the needs of both patients and employees to ensure that the safest possible environment is maintained throughout the healthcare facility. Early isolation standards required that patients be placed under isolation protocols when an infectious process was diagnosed or strongly suspected. Patients were assigned isolation protocols based on a system that categorized them according to the type of disease and its primary method of transmission. As infection control knowledge increased, emphasis was placed on a different protection strategy that looked upon all blood and body fluids from all patients as potentially infectious, regardless of the patient's diagnosis. This concept of universal precautions forced healthcare professionals to change the way that they thought about infection and the way that they interacted with all patients. Over the years, efforts were made to streamline the existing system.1
Infection transmission risks are present in all hospital settings. However, certain hospital settings and patient populations have unique conditions that predispose patients to infection. These are often sentinel sites for the emergence of new transmission risks that may be unique to that setting or present opportunities for transmission to other settings in the hospital. Current Guidelines from the CDC/HICPAC Committee. The transition of healthcare delivery from primarily acute care hospitals to other healthcare settings (e.g., home care, ambulatory care, free-standing specialty care sites, long-term care) created a need for recommendations that can be applied in all healthcare settings using common principles of infection control practice, yet can be modified to reflect setting-specific needs. Accordingly, the revised guideline addresses the spectrum of healthcare delivery settings. Furthermore, the term "nosocomial infections" is replaced by "Healthcare Associated Infections" (HAIs) to reflect the changing patterns in healthcare delivery and difficulty in determining the geographic site of exposure to an infectious agent and/or acquisition of infection. Current Guidelines from the CDC/HICPAC Committee seek to serve that purpose.2
- Infection Control Today;May 2005 Isolation Best-Practices.
- 2007 Guideline for Isolation Precautions: Preventing Transmission of Infectious Agents in Healthcare Settings(CDC-HICPAC)