We know that our friend Ben Franklin advised Philadelphia, hey you guys are at risk of fire,

and remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

We've talked about this before and this phrase has gone on to mean a lot of things.

But in health care it's kind of the central tenant and one of the pillars of things that we do

for our patients.

There are three major levels of prevention for all of us that work with patients.

There's primary prevention which is going to be to intervene before the health effects occur.

This can be like a vaccination.

There's secondary prevention which is to screen and identify diseases in the earliest stage

so that they don't become more advanced, like for example doing colonoscopies and getting rid of polyps so they don't turn into colon cancer down the line.

And then there's tertiary prevention which is going to manage disease and reduce the overall

burden both in the post-diagnosis period to slow it down or to stop

its progression.

And so these levels of prevention play a big role.

But now what about when you try to think about health care providers and try to prevent diseases occurring in them?

What exactly am I talking about? I'm talking about post-exposure prophylaxis.

In other words, what are the major post-exposure

prophylaxis that we use for both health care providers when they're exposed

to certain types of viruses, infections, and toxins, but also when our patients become exposed to these same kind of threats and what can we do to prevent

the disease from occurring altogether.

So ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's podcast where we review the major post-exposure prophylaxis and the protocols

involved with them.

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