Place of Body Substance Isolation Practice in History
Practice of Universal precautions was introduced in 1985–88. In 1987, the practice of Universal precautions was adjusted by a set of rules known as body substance isolation. In 1996, both practices were replaced by the latest approach known as standard precautions (health care). Nowadays and in isolation, practice of body substance isolation has just historical significance.
Body substance isolation went further than universal precautions in isolating workers from pathogens, including substances now currently known to carry HIV. These pathogens fall into two broad categories, bloodborne (carried in the body fluids) and airborne. The practice of BSI was common in Pre-Hospital care and Emergency Medical Services due to the often unknown nature of the patient and his/her disease or medical conditions. It was a part of the National Standards Curriculum for Prehospital Providers and Firefighters.
Types of body substance isolation included:
- Hospital gowns
- Medical gloves
- Shoe covers
- Surgical mask or N95 Respirator
- Safety Glasses
It was postulated that BSI precautions should be practiced in environment where treaters were exposed to bodily fluids, such as:
- blood, semen, preseminal fluid, vaginal secretions, synovial fluid, amniotic fluid, cerebrospinal fluid, pleural fluid, peritoneal fluid, marrow, pericardial fluid, feces, nasal secretions, urine, vomitus, sputum, mucus, cervical mucus, phlegm, saliva, breastmilk, colostrum, and secretions and blood from the umbilical cord
Such infection control techniques that were recommended following the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s. Every patient was treated as if infected and therefore precautions were taken to minimize risk. Other conditions which called for minimizing risks with BSI:
- Diseases with air-borne transmission (e.g., tuberculosis)
- Diseases with droplet transmission (e.g., mumps, rubella, influenza, pertussis)
- Transmission by direct or indirect contact with dried skin (e.g., colonisation with MRSA) or contaminated surfaces
- Prion diseases (e.g., Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease)
or any combination of the above.
Read more about this topic: Body Substance Isolation
Famous quotes containing the words place, body, substance, isolation, practice and/or history:
“Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide;
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)
“But they that hold God to be [an incorporeal substance] ... do absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their hearts they thought God a substance ... So that this atheism by consequence is a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly men of the church.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)
“One of the most significant effects of age-segregation in our society has been the isolation of children from the world of work. Whereas in the past children not only saw what their parents did for a living but even shared substantially in the task, many children nowadays have only a vague notion of the nature of the parent’s job, and have had little or no opportunity to observe the parent, or for that matter any other adult, when he is fully engaged in his work.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)