International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences | February 2016 | Vol 4 | Issue 2 Page 606 International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Chaudhuri S et al. Int J Res Med Sci. 2016 Feb;4(2):606-609 www.msjonline.org pISSN 2320-6071 | eISSN 2320-6012 Research Article Universal precaution: practice among doctors in a tertiary care hospital in Manipur Susmita Chaudhuri 1 *, Omkar Prasad Baidya 2 , T. Gambhir Singh 3 Rajesh Veeramachaneni, Pradeep Samuel Indurkar INTRODUCTION Universal precaution (UP) is defined as a method of infection control—recommended by the Centre for Disease Control (CDC)—in which all human blood, certain body fluids, as well as fresh tissues and cells of human origin are handled as if they are known to be infected with HIV, HBV and or other blood-borne pathogens. 1 In 1983, a section entitled "Blood and Body Fluid Precautions" was published under a document "Guideline for Isolation Precautions in Hospitals". The recommendations were to take blood and body fluid precautions only for a patient known or suspected to be infected with blood-borne pathogens. In August 1987, CDC document entitled "Recommendations for Prevention of HIV Transmission in Health-Care Settings" came up with guidelines mentioning that all patients regardless of their blood-borne infection status should be ABSTRACT Background: Health workers especially doctors are always at higher risk of exposure to blood borne pathogens in day to day practice. Universal precaution is the only strategy so that all these infections could be prevented. The objective of the study was to assess the practice of Universal Precautions among doctors & factors influencing its use in a tertiary health centre of Manipur. Methods: Cross-sectional study was conducted among the doctors in a tertiary health care centre of Manipur during October 2011 to September 2013. Structured questionnaire was used to collect data. Descriptive statistics like percentage was used to describe the findings using SPSS 20. Results: Total respondents were 366 doctors. Response rate was 98%. Total of 125 (34.2%) respondents always used glove as a measure of universal precaution. Hand-washing after removal of gloves was practiced by more than half of the respondents. Around 2 in 10 participants never used personal protective equipments like gown & mask. Around 7 in 10 participants always practiced recapping after use. Total of 150 respondents (41%) used to dispose sharps in sharp and liquid proof container with removing syringe.74.3% mentioned the reasoning of not practicing universal precaution was lack of supply of personal protective equipment. A total of 50 respondents told that emergency situation was also responsible for not adhering to the practice. Work stress (1.6%), time constraint (5.7%), lack of display of guidelines (3.8%) were the reasons mentioned by few of them. Conclusions: Universal precaution practice was poor. Training of the health care workers, proper equipment supply, posters displaying guidelines and proper hospital policy of patient load management would help in improving the implementation of universal precaution thus restoring occupational safety of health care workers. Keywords: Universal precaution, Personal protective equipment, Doctors 1 Department of Community Medicine, ESI PGIMSR & ESIC Medical College, Joka, Kolkata, India 2 Department of Physiology, I-Care Institute of Medical Sciences, Haldia, West Bengal, India 3 Department of Community Medicine, Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, Imphal, Manipur, India Received: 30 December 2015 Accepted 23 January 2016 *Correspondence: Dr. Susmita Chaudhuri, E-mail: schaudhuri1986@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20160324