The Importance Of Hand Hygiene

Another problem that goes with the lack of hand-hygiene compliance is the many excuses that healthcare workers use to avoid washing their hands. Hass and Larson summarize (2009) some of the barriers to adherence that healthcare workers use, “a lack of access to hand-washing sinks, insufficient time, skin irritations, and lack of accountability” (Hass & Larson, 2009). Some solutions they explain to combat the barriers are to put more alcohol-based sanitizers where sinks are not around and placing them all over the patient care areas also reduces time and can be a suitable way for proper hand hygiene if the healthcare worker’s hand is not soiled. They also describe, “Involve staff in trying several alcohol-based hand sanitizers before deciding on one, and involve employee health services in creating a plan to manage hand-skin problems among staff. Alcohol-based sanitizers that have lotion in them can be helpful for staff who have very sensitive skin” (Hass & Larson, 2009).

Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) affect over 1.7 million patients each year, causing almost 100,000 deaths annually in the United States alone (Johnson, 2010). According to the World Health Organization, HAIs are the most frequent adverse event in the healthcare industry. Fortunately, most of these infections can be prevented with one single intervention, proper hand hygiene (“The Evidence,” n.d.). Four out of five pathogens that cause illness are spread by direct contact. Proper hand hygiene eliminates these pathogens and helps to prevent cross-contamination and HAIs (Linton, 2015; “Hand Hygiene,” n.d.). Reduction of cross-contamination and HAIs improves patient outcomes, increases employee wellness, and lowers health care costs. Adherence to proper hand hygiene is the single most important safety measure in the health care setting. However, for many years compliance to proper hand hygiene in the healthcare industry has been dismally low. New and inventive measures must be implemented to increase compliance to proper hand hygiene and lower the rate of hospital-acquired infections.

Keeping our hands clean is one of the most effcient and important steps we can do as humans to avoid getting sick or spreading germs to other people. Unwashed hands spread many diseases such as the flue, E. coli, and salmonella. Unfortunately, hand hygiene is still one of today’s most leading causes of infection in health care facilities. The risk of clinicians, patients, and visitors not complying with hand hygiene protocols creates a practice problem for nurses and their patient care. The cause of health care infections, also known as, health care-associated infections (HAIs) are increasing along with the rise of the inability to control or treat infections that are multi-drug resistant. Lack of proper hand hygiene is a major problem in clinical settings sourcing from critical care divisions where the most contaminations are prevalent. This paper will discuss how hand hygiene affects the nursing process and solutions of how to better prevent HAIs within the nursing scope of practice.

This study was intended to prove that hand hygiene practiced according to the CDC guidelines will decrease the incidence of hospital acquired infections. This could not really be proved in this study since the hospitals were not able to maintain improvement in hand hygiene. Health care workers were familiar with guidelines but significant practice changes were not maintained. Some of the infection rates did improve during this time but the correlation with hand hygiene is not consistent. There were other practice changes occurring during this same time and those changes may be responsible for the decreased infection rates.

CDCs clean hands count campaign aim to improve healthcare provide adherence to hand hygiene recommendations, address, myths and misperceptions about hand hygiene and empower patients to play a role in their care by asking or reminding healthcare providers to clean their hands and the most germs that cause serious infections in healthcare are spread by people’s action, every patient is at risk of getting an infection while they are being treated for something else, hand hygiene is a great way to prevent infections and healthcare providers clean their hands less than half of the time they should, good hand washing is the first line of defense against the spread of many illness.

Generations of people have considered handwashing a measure of personal hygiene. In 1847, Dr. Semmelweis insisted that healthcare providers wash their hands with disinfecting agents between patients. This early hand hygiene practice resulted in a decrease in mortality rates among hospital patients (CDC, 2002). The CDC’s Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee published the Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings in 2002 that is based on hand hygiene foundations developed in generation past. In 2014, this guideline is still available online and used as a reference

There are numerous evidence-based practice interventions that have become standard nursing practices across the country. Hand hygiene is a nursing practice intervention that is currently evidence (research) based. It is one of, if not the most, important interventions practiced in providing standardized care. The rationale behind that statement refers to the high percentage of hospital acquired infections; hand hygiene practices are measures used for maximum effectiveness in reducing the spread of these infections. Compared to the various health care professionals who come in contact with patients when providing care, nurses are by far the largest faction that implements the highest quantity of direct patient care in health care. That said, of all the asepsis precautions, techniques, and interventions that are currently in place, hand hygiene is the single most effective intervention used by nurse to prevent themselves from infection and the cross-infection to their patients. Although this evidence-based intervention is of utmost importance to implement at all times, research shows the difficulty in influencing nurses and other health care professionals to practice hand hygiene as often as recommended.

Prevention strategies of nosocomial infections related to poor hand hygiene include revision of: orientation, training processes, competency assessments, equipment cleaning, handwashing procedures, switching to the use of single-use IV flush vials, adding strategically located waterless hand rubs, defining supervisory expectations, conducting in-services, team trainings, and tracking systems (Infection control related sentinel events, 2003). Potential solutions to noncompliance include: consistent skin protectant application, reduced time required for handwashing, and antiseptic stations at the bedside and room entry points (Boyce, 1999). Hospital administrators must create an organizational atmosphere in which adherence to recommended HH practices are considered an integral part of providing high-quality care (Boyce, 1999). Improvement in infection control

In other to be successful in improving adherence with hand hygiene policies and procedures at the hospital, the system of change strategy will be multimodal and comprise staff education and motivation, the use of performance indicators, and hospital management support (Troy, n.d.). Effective campaigns will bring about lessened contamination rates, antimicrobial resistance spread, and improve patient safety. The multidisciplinary strategy will include: (British Columbia Ministry of Health, 2012)

This paper will discuss the importance of the use of isolation precautions, and hand hygiene. It will discuss how a nurse named Sophie helps mentor a new CNA staff member to the team by constructively teaching him about proper use of Personal Protection Equipment and good Hand Hygiene. It will also give an example a constructive way for Sophie to address the problem at hand. Sophie is what you would call a Link Nurse. The purpose of a link nurse is to reduce the infection rates of the facility of employment. The nurse will mentor staff and teach by example along with watching different tasks and giving good constructive feedback. The paper will narrate some of the teaching Sophie gives Miguel.

Mistakes are made in the healthcare field every day and there are a few ways that this can be prevented. We are going to discuss different ways to decrease the chances of errors for the safety of our patients. Every facility has or should have, somewhere in the building, a copy of the national patient safety goals and it is important that you know what they are and where to find them. As we navigate through the goals that are to be discussed, we will touch on a few that are very important from reducing the risk of healthcare associated infections to improving the accuracy of resident identification. With all this in mind we can greatly reduce the risk we put or patients in every day.

After the program, there is an increase in level of knowledge (79% to 91% to correctly identify hand washing guideline) about the hand washing issue and an increase in compliance rate (51% to 83%). The participants in the study have positive attitudes towards hand washing, before and after the program, suggesting that it is fine for a patient to remind his or her doctors to wash their hands. This study suggests an immediate rearrangement of the alcohol hand rub at each patient’s bedside, and a ongoing issue regarding caregivers’ skin irritation that has to be addressed quickly. Overall, the research shows that increasing hand washing compliance rate is a multifaceted problems that have to be addressed in multiple ways, from the position of the alcohol hand rub to the hand rub that do not irritate the healthcare workers’

Healthcare associated infections have an impact on patients - how? Can be prevented greatly with compliance to hand hygiene protocols (REF).

Hand hygiene is everybody’s job, including the patients. Linda Pearson (2006) refers to AL Damouk et al (2004) who suggests that inviting patients to become partners in their care maybe an appropriate response to reports of the rising incidence of healthcare associated infections and difficulties with

Recent studies show that at any time, over 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from hospital-acquired infections (Public Health Ontario). In Canada alone, approximately 250 000 patients every year contract infectious micro-organisms from their healthcare providers (Nagel 18). At London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) we take pride in providing world class care in a safe, comfortable environment for patients. However, between 2008 and 2010 the LHSC still had between 20 and 30 per cent non-compliance to proper hand-washing protocol (Nagel 20). This data is very troubling considering it is following the launch of “Just Clean Your Hands” pilot project. As student nurses and volunteers of the LHSC team we are equally responsible to increase hand-washing compliance.