Barrier nursing

Barrier nursing is a largely archaic term for a set of stringent infection control techniques used in nursing. The aim of barrier nursing is to protect medical staff against infection by patients and also protect patients with highly infectious diseases from spreading their pathogens to other non-infected people. Barrier nursing is a largely archaic term for a set of stringent infection control techniques used in nursing. The aim of barrier nursing is to protect medical staff against infection by patients and also protect patients with highly infectious diseases from spreading their pathogens to other non-infected people. Barrier nursing was created as a means to maximize isolation care. Since it is impossible to isolate a patient from society and medical staff while still providing care, there are often compromises made when it comes to treating infectious patients. Barrier nursing is a method to regulate and minimize the number and severity of compromises being made in isolation care, while also preventing the disease from spreading. Barrier nursing started off as a term used by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to describe early infection control methods in the late 1800s. From the mid-1900s to early 2000s, 15 new terms had emerged and were also being used to describe infection control. The variety of terms that described infection care led to a misunderstanding of practice recommendations and eventual low adherence to isolation precautions; this eventually forced the CDC to combine all 15 terms into one term called isolation. Nowadays barrier nursing is becoming a less commonly used term and is not even recognized by most reputable databases or online scientific journals. Yet when it is seldom used, it relates mostly to circumstantial protocols for situations regarding isolation health care. The lack of constant use of the term is why there are no systematically reviewed articles on the topic and also why most of the sources that include the topic are from the late 1900s. Simple barrier nursing is used when an infectious agent is suspected within a patient and standard precautions aren't working. Simple barrier nursing consists of utilizing sterile: gloves, masks, gowns, head-covers and eye protection. Nurses also wear Personalized protective equipment(PPE) to protect their bodies from infectious agents. Simple barrier nursing is often used for marrow transplants, human Lassa virus transmission, viral hemorrhagic fever and other virulent diseases. Strict barrier nursing, which is also known as 'rigid barrier nursing', is used for the rarer and more specific deadly viruses and infections: smallpox, Ebola and rabies. Strict barrier nursing is a lot more demanding in terms of safety measure requirements because of the catastrophic effects that can occur if the disease or virus is allowed through the barrier. If patients cannot be isolated from one another completely, they have to at least be isolated from the rest of the patients within the hospital. In strict barrier nursing the patients and staff are usually isolated from the common population, and every attempt is made to establish a barrier between the inside and outside of the ward. The staff going on duty have to remove all outer clothing, pass through an airlock and put on a new set of PPE. When a staff member is going off duty, they are required to take a thorough shower and leave everything that was taken into the room to be disinfected or destroyed. While strict barrier nursing methods cannot always be enforced, especially in lower income areas and countries, any modifications made must be based on sound principles. Since infection can be spread through fomites, clothes or oxygen, all efforts must be made to limit the spread of these vessels. The doctor's or nurse's hands must be thoroughly washed after touching anything in the cubicle. Taps and door-handles should be elbow- or foot-operated. Hands should be washed in the cubicle and dried outside to eliminate contamination from paper or cloth towels. In addition, antiseptic hand-cream, dispensed from a foot-operated wall container would also serve as an additional precaution. Although participants understood the importance for Personalized Protective equipment, they still found that its use increased their fear and sense of stigma. Many researchers have indicated that healthcare professionals may regard a patient in source isolation differently from others. In studies regarding barrier nursing of patients with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, medical staff admitted to spending less time with patients in source isolation.