Essay On Staff Education

Patients have observed several physicians and nurses not washing their hands before interacting with patients. Hand hygiene is one of the largest tactics to combat nosocomial infections. The hospital should adopt a culture of 100% compliance with hand washing. The first step would be to increase handwashing stations and have more quick-dry alcohol-based antibacterial soap dispensers. Making access easier and decreasing the time taken to wash one’s hands would encourage adherence the policy. Furthermore, each floor should track hand washing and report data of potential nosocomial infections caused by improper handwashing. Keeping patients protected from bacteria is important especially when most are in an immunocompromised

Implementation Processes: The retrospective data of hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers from 2014-2015 were analyzed. Then, integrating the essence data of non-compliance with hand hygiene from fish bones analysis to develop patient engagement intervention—Hand Hygiene Compliance Process Flow Chart—for improving hand hygiene compliance. The PDSA development cycles, and WHO measures hand hygiene compliance were conducted to test the feasibility of the intervention within 10 days. The staff members working in the oncology unit were a target; 20-30 members were tested for daily hand hygiene compliance. The processes were: PDSA cycle 1: the pilot test by educating two patients about hand hygiene. As a result of this cycle, we adapted

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.

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.

This can be accomplished by implementing a monthly handwashing initiative on the unit that would consist of completing five anonymous evaluations a month. Staff can enter their names into a drawing on the unit, winners will receive a prize for their participation. The increase in consistent handwashing between patients will reduce mortality and morbidity rates, reduce length of stay, reduce infection rates therefore increasing reimbursement for the hospital.

Hand hygiene is a general term that refers to any action of hand cleaning. This include disinfecting agent such as alcohol or soap and water. Hand Hygiene ought to be directed by healthcare professionals before seeing patients, after contact with organic liquids, before intrusive techniques, and in the wake of expelling gloves (Burns, Bradley, Weiner, 2012). The WHO offers a slight variety by suggesting five key moments when human services specialists ought to practice hand cleanliness: before patient contact, before an aseptic errand, after natural liquid presentation hazard, after patient contact, and after contact with patient environment. Intercessions included expanding sink or liquor based arrangement accessibility, instruction, and

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).

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.

One of the main problems is hand hygiene and evidence suggests that healthcare staff including nurses do not perform this task as often as they should nor do they use the proper procedure. Even though it is

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.

Hand hygiene practices are important thing to infection prevention and control practice. As health provider especially ED staff or front liner, to follow hand washing protocols is necessary in any situation. According Practice Standard (2009) four major elements to preventing practice; hand washing, protective barriers, care of equipment and health practice of nurse. Cite from Health Promotion Agency for Northern Ireland, scientists has found around 45% of infections can be prevented by washing hands regularly. MOH (2010) increasing in hand-washing compliance by

Research shows that Surgical site infections are preventable. According to the CDC, hand hygiene is the simplest approach to preventing the spread of infections and needs to be incorporated into the culture of the organization. Ensuring the use of infection control prevention is an important component of nursing care. Infection control prevention policies must be communicated undoubtedly to all employees. Staffers who do not comply must be re-educated to ensure that all are complying. Speaking up and pointing out that a nurse forgot to wash his or her hands, or notifying the surgical team that surgical instruments were not adequately cleaned may seem like small issues; but at the same time, not acknowledging a break in a sterile technique could mean the difference between life and death for a patient. One hospital that was struggling with high levels of infection related to surgical procedures, implemented a pre-procedure huddle as a team. This innovate way decreased the spread of infection and was a great way to improve the quality of care for patients. As mandated by the Joint commission, infection prevention personnel should provide multidisciplinary education on SSI prevention, to all team members, including

The main of focus of the quality improvement program is always patient’s safety, needs, quality care and expectations. Even though the healthcare system is very critical as it involves the lives of other, there are some errors that can lead to undesirable consequences. One of the most common error that risks the lives of thousands of people including both patients and healthcare employees is the hand hygiene. Healthcare personnel are the leading source for the spread of Hospital acquired Infections. Every year about one million people die from hospital acquired infections in United States.

(Nagel 22). Student nurses and volunteers should place emphasis on hand-washing before and after contact

Fuller, C. Michie, S. Savage, J. McAteer, J. Besser, S. Charlett, A. Hayward, A. Cookson, B. Cooper, B. Duckworth, G. Jeanes, A. Roberts, J. Teare, L. Stone, S. (2012). The Feedback Intervention Trial - Improving hand-hygiene compliance in UK Healthcare Workers: A Stepped wedge cluster randomised Controlled Trial. PLoS One. 7 (10).