CRCST Chapter 6 Practice Test: Infection Prevention

Infection prevention is the primary purpose of the Central Service department. This chapter examines the chain of infection — the six links that must all be present for transmission to occur — and how sterile processing breaks those links. You will learn about standard precautions, transmission-based precautions, hand hygiene compliance, and the Spaulding classification system that categorizes patient care items as critical, semi-critical, or non-critical based on their intended use and the level of processing required. Critical items (those entering sterile tissue) require sterilization; semi-critical items (those contacting mucous membranes) require high-level disinfection. This framework drives every reprocessing decision and ensures the right level of processing is applied to each item.