Disinfectant Precautions
In case the patient being nursed has a communicable disease, care must be taken to avoid carrying any infection from the sick-room. As an attendant must leave the sick¬room from time to time it is advisable for her to wear a boudoir cap or a dust-cap, and a light wrap over her dress while in the sick-room, removing them when leaving the room. At the doorway of the room a sheet should be hung on the outside and kept sprinkled with some efficient disinfectant. This sheet covers the entrance into the sick room when the door is opened.
In communicable diseases it is essential that those attending the patient maintain their own health at the highest possible standard, that they under no circumstances neglect thoroughly to wash their hands or other parts of the body which may come in contact with the patient, and also that they keep each elimi-native outlet of the body free to perform its functions. That physicians and nurses themselves become so rarely infected while handling those who are affected by communicable diseases is in a large measure due to the resisting powers with which their own physical condition provides them and also to the sanitary precautions they observe.