The Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) would like to encourage all Registered Nurse (RN) Trainers to incorporate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) guidance for preventing the transmission of communicable diseases while teaching medication administration certification classes.

As a response to the coronavirus (COVID-19), attendee wellness screening, social distancing, universal precautions, standard precautions, and transmission-based precautions should all be applied to the organization and conducting of medication administration certification initial training classes. Renewal education and skills verification may be done remotely, as needed, if conducted in such a way that learner attendance and skill performance can be reasonably verified.

Excerpts from OSHA Guidance

Read “Worker protections against occupational exposure to infectious diseases” here.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards for blood-borne pathogens (BBP, 29 CFR 1910.1030) and personal protective equipment (PPE, 29 CFR 1910 Subpart I):

• Universal precautions (UP), originally recommended by the CDC in the 1980s, was introduced as an approach to infection control to protect workers from HIV, HBV, and other bloodborne pathogens in human blood and certain other body fluids, regardless of a patients’ infection status. UP is an approach to infection control in which all human blood and certain human body fluids are treated as if they are known to be infectious. Although the BBP standard incorporates UP, the infection control community no longer uses UP on its own.
• Standard precautions (SP), introduced in 1996 in the CDC/Healthcare Infection Control and Prevention Advisory Committee’s "1996 Guideline for Isolation Precautions in Hospitals," added additional infection prevention elements to UP in order to protect healthcare workers not only from pathogens in human blood and certain other body fluids, but also pathogens present in body fluids to which UP does not apply. SP includes hand hygiene; the use of certain types of PPE based on anticipated exposure; safe injection practices; and safe management of contaminated equipment and other items in the patient environment. SP is applied to all patients even when they are not known or suspected to be infectious.
• Transmission-based precautions (TBP) for contact-, droplet-, and airborne-transmissible diseases augment SP with additional controls to interrupt the route(s) of transmission that may not be completely interrupted using SP alone.  The different types of TBP are applied based on what is known or suspected about a patient’s infection.

Excerpts from CMS Guidance

Read guidance for screening visitors in skilled nursing facilities here.

1. Signs or symptoms of a respiratory infection, such as fever, cough, shortness of breath, or sore throat.

2. In the last 14 days, has had contact with someone with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, or under investigation for COVID-19, or is ill with respiratory illness.

3. International travel within the last 14 days to countries with sustained community transmission. For updated information on affected countries, visit the CDC’s site.

4. Residing in a community where community-based spread of COVID-19 is occurring.

DODD has set up a dedicated web page for department communications and links to helpful resources that will advise people with disabilities, their families, service providers, direct support professionals, county boards of developmental disabilities, and the community at large.

For specific questions about COVID-19 and additional information and resources, DODD urges you to use the Ohio Department of Health’s call center. Call 1-833-4-ASK-ODH (1-833-427-5634), or visit coronavirus.ohio.gov.