Deciding Which System of Isolation Precautions to Use in Your Hospital

Extract

To use the new approaches introduced in this guideline most effectively, each hospital's infection control committee must thoroughly review the entire guideline and MAKE A DECISION regarding which of the alternative systems of isolation precautions to use.

The first step is for all members of the committee who will participate in this decision to review the entire guideline carefully. This is necessary because the Guideline for Isolation Precautions in Hospitals contains many changes in recommended procedures as well as format from the previous manual Isolation Techniques for Use in Hospitals. To facilitate this review, we have summarized the most important changes in the introduction to the guideline and have included the rationale for these changes in other sections of the document.

The second step is for the infection control committee to MAKE A DECISION as to whether their hospital will use System A, the Category-Specific System, or System B, the Disease-Specific System, both of which are thoroughly described in this guideline. Of course, in some hospitals the committee may decide instead to use the information and recommendations in this guideline to create their own system of isolation precautions. However, from a logistical point of view, the committee should not try to combine different elements taken from both systems, because mixing the 2 approaches may lead to confusion among hospital personnel who are expected to apply the isolation precautions in patient care. Personnel throughout the hospital who will be using isolation precautions should be trained to apply only the system that is officially adopted by the infection control committee.