Hands-free technique: preventing occupational exposure during surgery

SHEA guideline for management of healthcare workers who are infected with hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, and/or human immunodeficiency virus

This guideline provides the updated recommendations of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) regarding the management of healthcare providers who are infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and/or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). For the reasons cited in the guideline, SHEA continues to recommend that, although some aspects of the approach to and administrative management of each of these infectious syndromes in healthcare providers are similar, separate management strategies for healthcare workers who are infected with these unrelated viruses remain appropriate. As we did in both prior iterations of this document, SHEA emphasizes the use of appropriate infection control procedures to minimize exposure of patients or providers to blood, emphasizes that transfers of blood from patients to providers and from providers to patients should be avoided, and recommends that infected healthcare providers should not be totally prohibited from participating in patient-care activities solely on the basis of a bloodborne pathogen infection. The types of procedures assessed by the panel as associated with an increased risk for provider-to-patient transmission of these pathogens are discussed in detail. For each pathogen, recommendations are graduated according to the relative viral load level of the infected provider (Tables 1 and 2). However, SHEA emphasizes that, because of the complexity of these cases, each such case will be slightly different from the next, and each should be independently considered in context.