Safety Precautions

April 13, 2006

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Treat an employee who has been diagnosed with AIDS no differently from any employee with a serious illness and take appropriate precautions (to both protect life and dignity) in your workplace.

In general, you should always recognize and prepare for situations that may result in contact with potentially contaminated body fluids, even if you think there's no possibility that any of your employees might be HIV-positive. By developing precautions against certain types of contact, you can accommodate a potentially HIV-infected employee, assure the safety of other employees, and comply with the OSHA mandate to provide a safe workplace.

To determine the types of precautions that you need to take, examine all aspects of your operation and look for circumstances where employees may be exposed to blood. Although this possibility is obvious in some industries, certain precautions can be taken even in office environments, particularly in the event of an emergency. Actions you should take include the following:

Provide employees with protective clothing such as rubber gloves to help prevent direct contact between the potentially infected blood of an injured employee and an employee that assists the injured employee. A logical place for these is in the first aid kit.
Ensure that any safety precautions that you adopt are required of all employees working in positions where some risk of exposure has been assessed.
Report exposures to bodily fluids immediately to a medical professional. The exposed worker and the individual who was the source of the exposure should be evaluated by a doctor to determine the possible need for HBV vaccination and HIV testing with the confidentiality of both persons protected at all times.
Train employees at every level about how to respond and what the facts are. Open and honest communication will help to diminish employee fears.