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JCAHO surveys target clean hands

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, June 9, 2006

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With staff handwashing being such an easy item to watch for, expect this National Patient Safety Goal to remain a high IC priority during accreditation surveys.

Hospitals can safely assume that surveyors will "pay specific attention to how well facilities follow the recommendations on the patient safety goals," says Vicky Zelenka, RN, CIC, director of IC and clinical epidemiology at McLeod Health in Florence, SC.

During McLeod Health's JCAHO survey, surveyors expressed interest in frontline employees' knowledge about all IC policies and how well they turn this knowledge into actual practice, Zelenka says. Surveyors asked employees about various policies (e.g., how to use gloves while charting).

Staff may also face questions about isolation measures, sharps safety, disinfection and sterilization, medical and surgical asepsis, and other topics. At McLeod Health, surveyors checked needle disposal boxes in rooms to determine how full they were.

To read more about McLeod Health's experience with the JCAHO visit, go to Briefings on Infection Control (BOIC). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire June issue of BOIC. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BOIC have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their June issue.

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