Healthcare-Associated Infections: Precautions

Many precautions must be taken when caring for others to prevent the spread of disease. Below, you can find information on standard precautions, transmission-based precautions, and enhanced barrier precautions, which are guidelines for health care personnel to use to protect themselves and those for whom they provide care.

Standard precautions

Standard precautions are a set of infection control practices used to prevent transmission of diseases that can be acquired by contact with blood, body fluids, non-intact skin (including rashes), and mucous membranes. Standard precautions should be used when providing care to all patients and residents, whether they appear infectious or symptomatic or not. Standard precautions apply at all times and in all locations of health care. The components of standard precautions include hand hygiene, sharps safety, cleaning and disinfection, respiratory hygiene, and waste disposal.

Transmission-based precautions

Transmission-based precautions are used in addition to standard precautions when the use of standard precautions alone does not fully prevent communicable disease transmission. There are three types of transmission-based precautions. The type of precautions used depends on the mode of transmission of a specific disease. Some diseases require more than one type of transmission-based precaution.

Types of transmission-based precautions

Resources on transmission-based precautions


Enhanced barrier precautions for nursing homes

Enhanced barrier precautions (EBPs) expand the use of PPE beyond situations in which exposure to blood and body fluids is anticipated and incorporate gown and glove use for high-contact resident care activities where multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) may be transferred to staff hands, equipment, and clothing. EBPs address the growing number of outbreaks where MDRO transmission is believed to have occurred from residents who were colonized with an organism, but not actively infected. EBPs offer a mid-point between standard and contact precautions, and were developed to protect at-risk residents, while being less restrictive than contact precautions. They also consider the types of activities that pose a higher transmission risk in the more home-like environment of skilled nursing facilities for residents who may live there for many years.

Resources on EBPs


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Last revised June 24, 2025