HLTINF003 Report: Infection Control Policy Implementation & Monitoring

This report assesses the implementation and monitoring of infection control policies and procedures within a healthcare setting, focusing on HLTINF003 requirements. It identifies strengths in current practices, such as hand hygiene protocols, use of personal protective equipment, and environmental cleaning strategies, while also recommending improvements in areas like data collection and staff feedback mechanisms. The report emphasizes the importance of clinical governance, adherence to national guidelines, and continuous monitoring to mitigate infection risks and ensure patient and staff safety. It also highlights the significance of staff training, risk assessment, and the proper handling of sharp objects to maintain a safe and hygienic clinical environment. Desklib provides access to this and other solved assignments.

RUNNING HEAD: INFECTION CONTROL AND PREVENTION
INFECTION CONTROL AND PREVENTION
Name of Student
Name of University
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INTRODUCTION
Infectious diseases and allergies implies portentous risks in a dental care setting, a
clinic. These are certain guidelines (Trubiano et al. 2016) laid within a legal framework that
the dental practitioners of Australia are instructed and hoped to comply with in a daily dental
profession. The policies and rules apply to all the dentists, the dental prosthetist, the dental
hygienists, the dental therapists, the dental specialists and the oral therapists. These infection
control strategies are pertinent to how the dental practitioners and other related professionals
can avert or decrease the risk of infectious spread in a dental clinic. Dental practitioners may
be committed to this framework in such a way that it regulates and also contributes to
improvement of public health and a dental care safety by assuring and fostering an awareness
about a risk free environment in a clinic. These clinical and environmental guidelines are
brought up by section 39 of Dental Board of Australia who controls the execution of these
guideline at a state and territory level in compliance with the Health Practitioner Regulation
National Law.
Infection control according to the guidelines
Infection control emphases on limiting factors that prevents infection transmission
and contribute to microbial spread. The microbial spread mist be diminished by – 1.limiting
the surface contamination (Sousa et al. 2016) with infectious organisms. 2. Following
personal sanitary and health hygiene practices, particularly good hand hygiene. 3. Usage of
right personal protective equipment (Lima et al. 2016.) 4. Using disposable products when
appropriate. 5. Adherence to risk reduction techniques (Clevenger et al. 2015) such as pre-
procedural or pre surgical mouth rinsing.
The standard precautions inscribed by the national body have the basic processes of
infection control that help cut down the infection transmission risk. It involves – 1.

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Undertaking routine hand cleaning after gloving and before glove use. 2. Using protective
barriers like masks, gloves, gowns and eye protection. 3. Application of a proper protective
equipment while doing the clinical procedures, while cleaning, reprocessing (World Health
Organization 2016) the instruments.4. Correct management of contaminated waste. 5.
Handling the sharps objects in the right way. 6. Proper use of reusable instruments (Price
2016) 6. Effectively adhering to environmental cleaning guidelines. 7. Maintenance of cough
etiquette and respiratory hygiene. 7. Appropriate using of the aseptic non-touch techniques. 8.
Handling clinical gowns and linen with care. 9. Environmental barriers like the plastic
coverings in surfaces and on items which may be contaminated and are at risk.
CLINICAL GOVERNANCE REQUIREMENTS
Each dental health practitioner in a clinical setting must guarantee that a person at
highest level is very much responsible for the leadership of infection prevention and the
control program across the organization. The outcomes and progress of programs must
always be reported to the highest management of organization. According to dental health
infection control - 1 the clinical leaders and the senior managers of dental clinic must take the
responsibility for implementation and evaluation of systems in order to prevent, manage
dental infections, with collaboration of Board who shall oversee this process. Additional
expertise and advice must be taken from expert individuals or skilled workforce or infection
control committee whenever required. The plan must specify vital steps in order to address
the enhancements and the measurement devices or infection control and risk management
(Little et al. 2017) Visitors and patients should be addressed with necessary information and
should be educated in order to avoid the spread of dental infections and communicable
diseases.

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Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act
Division 3 Registration standards and codes and guidelines
According to code and standards, each dental care practitioners should execute the
correct forms of infection control systems and the infection avoidance strategies for effective
management and prevention of dental clinic infections.
Infection control
Documentation
Every dental care clinic must be provided with the clinical care and infection control
guidelines. Every registered dental practitioner and the other assistive staffs must have an
access to these documents which are - a).Manual setting out of infection prevention protocols
and the procedures being used practice. The protocols can be present in an online source or a
written document format and both the types of information should be accessible from any
level. b). Australian Standards clinical (office – based) facilities involve reprocessing of the
reusable surgical and medical instruments and the equipment, and sustenance of a cleaning,
safety and reprocessing culture with the dental organization. c). Cleaning, sterilizing and
disinfecting (Canullo et al. 2017) the reusable surgical and medical instruments plus
equipment requires maintaining of a safe environment within the dental care facilities c). The
Australian Guidelines of Prevention and Control of Infection that is published by National
Health and Medical Research Council. d). Current Australian Dental Association Guidelines
for the Infection Control.
RISK MITIGATION POLICIES AND REQUIREMENTS
Standard precautions and standard precautions are minimum infection preventive
measures applicable to all health care settings, regardless of confirmed or suspected infection

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status of patient. Standard precautions (according to the policies) should always be in
application when managing for critical patients, when handling the body substances,
excretions and secretions, mucosal membranes, non-intact skin and eyes. These standard
precautions should involve adherence and compliance with all best clinical practices.
Behaviors
Each dental practitioner should exhibit assiduous behaviors that - a).confirm the clinic
in which the dental care practitioner practices, has a patient friendly and hygienic state that
reduce the spread of infectious diseases b). Ensure while attending the patient, the client or
the consumer, the dental clinician takes practicable steps to diminish the infectious diseases
spread c). Comply with the requirements given in four documents and then document their
practices. d). the dental care practitioner should be aware of infection status should take a
specialist’s advice of whether to or not to practice while he is ill and if his condition can
affect the exposure-prone procedures.
These personal behaviors are imperative to maintenance of a safe and infection
controlled environment and the mentioned guidelines should be followed by all the dental
health practitioners.
HAND HYGEINE
Hand hygiene is an important care of care and for hand based activities - alcohol hand
rub activities should be strictly followed. The soiled hands should be cleaned with liquid
soap, running water using the standard hand hygiene procedures. The dental health
practitioners must ensure that alcohol based hand rub procedures are followed in and after
every point of patient care. Considerations should be taken to ensure hygiene in the
workplace and to eliminate any change of patient safety risks by using Alcohol based hand
rub dispensers. The hand basins should comply with requirements of Australasian Health

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Facility Guidelines. Alcohol based hand rub (Wetzker et al. 2017), antiseptic wash, hand
scrub after and before surgery, liquid soap, packs, moisturizer containers, pump cartridges,
segments are to be used for one time and be disposed immediately.
Declaration
Dental practitioners applying for an initial registration or the renewal is required to
make a definite declaration while elucidates their awareness of clinic’s and personal infection
status in regards to blood-borne viruses and how they will adhere to the Communicable
Diseases Network Australia’s Australian National Guidelines. They also need to declare how
they resolute to comply with their clinical and infection control parameters and how they plan
to promote health awareness for public safety.
6.2.1 Patient and visitor hand hygiene
Hand hygiene (Stewardson et al. 2015) can be and should be performed by each and
every healthcare and dental care workers. Dental health workers should be encouraging
patients to follow the hand hygiene guidelines and should provide patient education on right
techniques of hand hygiene. Patients must be taught with hand hygiene after using toilet.
They should also use the same procedures before and after eating, blowing nose, after
sneezing, or coughing by hands. According to the policy – Visitors, volunteers should also be
taught the hand hygiene procedures and also be encouraged to do the hand hygiene
techniques after and before contact with their patients.
Respiratory hygiene and cough etiquette
To reduce the risk of infection’s transmission to others. With everyone entering,
visiting and working within a clinical environment – the risk is high and it can affect
symptoms or aggravate the signs of respiratory infection. The clinicians and visitors should

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have complete access to the hand hygiene resources. Masks use should also be encouraged to
complement the practice of cough etiquette and respiratory hygiene. Safe disposal of sharp
objects that carry the blood-borne viruses like needles, sharp instruments, scalpels – is a vital
form of respiratory infection control (Tripp, Jorquera and Tripp 2016), as mentioned by the
standard. The use of sharp objects can be even reduced if possible and should be disposed
immediately after the clinical use during the point of care.
Environmental cleaning
Each dental health officer should plan for an environmental cleaning strategy (Webb,
Whittle and Schwarz 2016) in first place and should be implemented in clinical environment
managed by a capable personnel. The entire procedure must be overseen and supervised by
all the dental health practitioners. This also includes the cleaning and sterilizing the patient
areas after and during the patient’s stay. Risk assessments should be done and undertaken in
each of the functional areas in order to determine a level of environmental cleaning that is
required. Performing the cleaning strategy in functional areas should be audited as per the
national infection control and audit standards.
CONCLUSION
Hence, it can be concluded saying that adherence to clinical guidelines and protocols
of infection control and prevention - by the dental care practitioners, visitors, patients alike, is
critical to the prevention of hospital acquired infections. As, the spread of dental clinic
infections occurs by various routes – usage of personal protective equipment, hand hygiene
and environmental cleaning strategies is vital under the circumstances. Peer feedbacks,
patient feedbacks and infection control adherence audits can increase compliance rates with
these infection control and prevention healthcare policies. The clinical procedures associated
with scrubbing, sterilizing, cleaning and maintain respiratory and hand hygiene should be

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followed imperatively and its use should be supervised by the senior clinicians. If they feel a
need of training to impart the specific safety risk education regarding infection control and
prevention – seminars and workshops should be arranged.

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Canullo, L., Tallarico, M., Chu, S., Pennarocha, D., Özcan, M., Dent, D.M. and Pesce, P.,
2017. Cleaning, Disinfection, and Sterilization Protocols Employed for Customized Implant
Abutments: An International Survey of 100 Universities Worldwide. International Journal of
Oral & Maxillofacial Implants, 32(4).
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to reduce surgical risk. British Journal of Surgery, 102(11), pp.1325-1337.
Lima, C.M.A., Smith, A.J., Silva, A.S.F., Flório, F.M. and Zanin, L., 2016. Infection
prevention and control in dental surgeries in the Pará state prison system in Brazil. American
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Trubiano, J.A., Cheng, A.C., Korman, T.M., Roder, C., Campbell, A., May, M.L.A., Blyth,
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