The Journal of

 Background: In 1994, the USA Center for Disease Control and Prevention developed the principles of General precaution to minimize the possibility of contamination of health care workers with pathogens transmitted by blood. Therefore This study was implemented to identify the quality and implementation of General precautions in emergency clinics at selected hospitals of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences to provide the appropriate guidelines and recommendations to promote the use of General precautions.

 Methods: This study used a cross-sectional (descriptive - analytical) design. Totally 220 employees completed the checklists. After completion, data were entered into SPSS and were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency tables, mean, and standard deviation) and inferential tests (Chi-square test, logistic regression.

 Results: Of the partieipants,45.5% and 54.5% of subjects were male and female respectively. General precautions overall compliance rate in male and female were 48.1% and 58.6% respectively. According to Chi square test results, the differences observed in the compliance with general precautions was significant regarding sex, working experience, job title, age group, participation in educational sessions and equipment /materials availability(P<0.05).

 Conclusion: The findings showed that the overall compliance rate adopted by the emergency clinie personnel with General precautions was at the intermediate level. Regarding that the risk of hepatitis B and HIV virus transmission in is very high among these employees, Implementing infection control standards, taking actions to improve staff compliance with personal protection issues, using engineering controls, cognitive approaches, strategies for behavior modification and combining theoretical education with experience are necessary to enhance skills necessary for applying the principles of general precautions.