All staff need to know procedures of this, and this would be vital in health care settings e.g. hospitals, this is because if there was something like a spread of infection or gasses being leaked into a building staff will need to know what to do as there are vulnerable people and this could be hazardous to their health.
Food safety act 1990
The food safety act was brought into give people the ability to inspect food and check the standard of food and see if it’s up to standard for people to consume. There are often inspections of food safety from outside agencies or the local council.
Health and social care professionals also can provide food for people, hospitals, nurseries and schools can provide food for service users and need to use this to check they are following the correct hygiene procedures. They may also have people who come in and inspect the hygiene measures and work places. This can be routine checks.
Reporting injuries, diseases and dangerous occurrences (RIDDOR) 1995
This piece of legislation is linked to the health and safety at work act; this makes it a legal requirement to report any accidents or concerns while working, RIDDOR is extremely important in health and social care, it helps people understand what to if there’s a situation where they can be at risk, this needs to be reported to the health and safety manger or the local council, this legislation also covers abuse at work and the potential risks that could cause harm. This piece of legislation makes in a legal requirement to report accidents or injuries, It also makes it a requirement to record any accidents and injuries that happen, this can be asked to be seen at any point. This is important in Health and safety executives seeing where risks occur and how they change this.
For this many places should appoint a health and safety executive or manager and this so that staff can report any dangerous occurrences, also so that all situations can be minimized, if there isn’t someone people can report to, this could cause a court case, as where there are inspections it could cause a serious issue as peoples health and safety are at risk.
The environmental protection (duty of care) regulation 1991
The Environmental protection (duty of care) regulation 1991, is primarily about the duty employees have when discarding things that have been used; there should be an appointed person in the setting to ensure that waste is disposed of correctly, it does not risk the health of either service user, visitor or employee; And finally that a record of all waste transferred or received is recorded and signed.
Health protection agency act 2008
The health protection agency act is put in place to protect everyone from the spread of infection and diseases, it aims to advise people to monitor diseases when they occur and the patterns of diseases that appear in the country, this also makes it a duty to provide expert advice for people and information, An example of this can be when there was the Swine Flu epidemic and there were 24 hour lines for people to get advice from.
Hazardous waste regulations 2005
This piece of legislation is focused on the disposal of waste and how to minimise the risk of spreading infection; this involved making sure the sharp bins and waste bins are available and that employees are aware of this and that they know why this procedure is in place and what the different bins are.
There is also an element on waste minimization, this is to separate waste and minimise what waste is infectious and what isn’t; this involved separate infectious waste from non-infectious waste.
M2 - Employee roles to preventing and controlling infection
Employees will have a number of roles and responsibilities when controlling infections and outbreaks, some of these will be explained in the next few paragraphs. Employee’s responsibilities are a number to people these people can be their self, colleagues. Service users, visitors, and their employee’s, the other responsibilities are though practice.
One of the roles is putting in the policies and procedures that are put in place to prevent infection, this role would involve people putting things in place like hand washing, also though disposing of waste the ‘right way e.g. putting sharps in sharp bins, putting clinical waste in the clinical waste bins, as these sorts of waste are in place for a reason, and that is to prevent the spread of infection, if a sharp is put in a clinical waste bin or a ‘normal’ and someone comes to take that bin away they could get a needle stick injury that could result in something like an infection of HIV, as the needle could be contaminated.
This policy links in with sharps procedures though staff have set procedures they need to follow, this is important as policies explain why people need to do things and that they have to, where procedures are the steps people take, so in this case the procedures in the work place will be putting things in the correct waste disposal bins, and because the procedures that need to be taken are in the polices this is a requirement and not following these can lead to disciplinary.
The procedure of disposing of sharps is good in that it helps reduce the chance of injuries in the staff or patients, the negative side to this is that people may not see the point in sharps bins and put things in the ‘normal’ bins or because to chaotic environments like surgery rooms, this can result in professionals rushing and putting things in the ‘wrong’ bins.
A vital role is to prevent the spread of infection there are key procedures to do this, on is though PPE, personal protective equipment; this includes gloves, aprons, ect. Also personal hygiene such as frequent hand washing, this is important in-between patients to stop infection spreading from one person to the other but also to protect the individual, By doing these and other procedures the individual is breaking the ‘chain of infection. This procedure is vitally important it means that staff is aware of PPE and that this is a routine, meaning that they follow procedures, so for example if a district nurse is working in a health care centre and needs to dress a person wound e.g. they may of had an operation and the dressing needs trained, then the nurse will to follow procedures in washing hands, putting on gloves and then taking gloves off and washing hand after the dressing is changed, this will be following procedures and would mean that they are removing the chances that a chain of infection will happen, and in a situation where a person doesn’t wash hands before and after they have put or taken off gloves without washing hands which can mean they can still have germs or micro-organisms on their hands which can create a risk that a chain of infection can be created.
Another role of employees is something that links to legislation, this is reporting and recording infection or concerns about illness, or anything that can put people’s health in jeopardy. This can be reporting things like seeing employees not use PPE, or putting things in the ‘wrong bin’ this can cause an outbreak of infection because it can lead to the spread on infection and complete the chain of infection; this concerns should be reported to the supervisor as they are trained to deal with things like this. Reporting and recording infections is part of procedure, it would be the employees responsibility to carry out this task, a similar situation to above, a district health nurse will need to ensure that if he or she believe there was either another employee not following a procedure like hand washing, or changing PPE ect, then they need to have everyone’s health and wellbeing as a top priority and report it, as this will ensure that people are at minimal risk of infection, especially in a health care practice where people that can enter the practice are very vulnerable when it comes to infection.
A key role is though risk assessments, this is used in almost every health and social care setting and even more so in controlling infection, risk assessments are role because they can point out areas in the setting that could potentially cause problems for everyone and then by indentifying this people can look at how to reduce this. Also another role that links into this is reviewing practices and procedures this can help professionals though always looking at ways to improve that practice and constantly change and address issues that arise. This will continually improve the work place though trying out new methods. The procedure of staff carrying out risk assessments is that staff can be made aware of the risks that can arise; this is good as it can lead to members of staff being more wary of the dangers of actions and where the main risks can be.
On the other hand the negative side of carrying to risk assessment procedures is because making risk assessment can take up a lot of time, and this can be time that could be spent helping service users; however it could be argued that it’s more important to ensure that risk assessments are taken place.
