As a US air ambulance paramedic, it’s your duty to prevent the spread of infectious disease to others. You’re dealing with different kinds of patients on a daily basis, some of who may be suffering from a highly infectious disease. Even if you’re doing what you can to avoid catching the illness, you may still be contributing to the transmission of the disease to other people. In fact, influenza, mumps, measles, etc. have been known to be transmitted through unvaccinated health workers. Plus, such infectious diseases may pose a problem to the healthcare professionals themselves.
Tips for US Air Ambulance Paramedics to Handle Infectious Diseases
The steps you’ve learnt years ago to prevent infectious disease transmission may be out of date. With new diseases being discovered, it’s important that you stay updated with the following latest tips that will help you in preventing the transmission of infectious diseases:
- Make sure you regularly use personal protective equipment so that you can minimize the exposure to OPIM and blood.
- Make sure you get your annual vaccinations on time and stay up to date as new transmittable diseases are discovered.
- Make sure you annually go for your 2-step tuberculosis skin test.
- Make sure you use disinfection supplies and processes as recommended by the CDC so as to ensure you kill off even the toughest of microorganisms.
- Come up with a protocol to carry out a routine disinfection of your medical devices and patient care area within the US air ambulance.
- Make sure you maintain the hand hygiene standards and sanitize your hands multiple times throughout the process of care and patient contact.
These are just a few of the steps you need to carry out in order to prevent the transmission of infectious diseases. Stay updated with latest regulations and standards from the CDC.
