Hand Hygiene Essay

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

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).

OBJECTIVE The objective for Rabie and Curtis (2006) was to determine the influence of hand washing on the risk of respiratory infection. METHOD The method adopted by Rabie and Curtis (2006) was to study a number of primary and review articles from five diverse databases before June 2004 in differing languages, to create a systematic review. Included in the review were studies which identified the impact of an intervention to promote hand cleansing on respiratory infections. Studies regarding hospital-acquired infections, long-term care facilities and the elderly were excluded. All studies were then evaluated where a conclusive decision was reached by consensus. Interestingly, from a primary list of 410 articles, only eight interventional studies reached the eligibility criteria. RESULTS The eight eligible studies disclosed that hand washing with antiseptic soap lowered risks of respiratory infection; the risk reduction identified as being from 6% to 44% and this range figures implied that hand washing can indeed reduce the risk of respiratory infection by 16% (Rabie and Curtis 2006). CONCLUSION Rabie and Curtis (2006) concluded that the studies collected were of insufficient quality and only one of the studies related to severe disease as well as none of the studies related

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.

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

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

Atul Gawande explains the single biggest problem facing hospitals in the spread of infection in his novel, Better. This is expressed in his conversation with the infection control team, where it is said that “their greatest difficulty is getting clinicians like me to do the one thing that consistently halts the spread of infection: wash our hands. (Gawande, 2007, 14)” He notes that diligence, one of his three core requirements for success in medicine, plays a huge role in enforcing a policy like handwashing. While everyone knows hand washing is important, especially in a hospital, letting health care professionals ignore the practice and make their own decisions about its criticality harms the whole population.

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

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

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

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

The first and foremost item of importance incoming Nursing Students learn is how to practice proper hand hygiene and specific techniques to attain it. It makes one wonder, while it is common sense information today, what lead to the discovery that unclean hands spread disease? When did proper hand hygiene finally take root as a standard practice? While Florence Nightingale first identified the relationship between nursing and infection control (Smith, 2009), it was a by-chance discovery, which was then studied and tested by Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis (Hardy) that lead to the conclusion that proper hand washing

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.