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Keep patients healthy with hand hygiene

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, October 4, 2007

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As a healthcare worker, your top priority is to provide the best patient care possible. You do everything you can to make patients better and get them home. But do you realize that hand hygiene is a step in that process of improving patient health and getting patients home? By not washing your hands after patient contact, you can carry infection from one patient to the next. In many cases, this makes the patient sicker and prolongs his or her hospital stay.

Studies show that people lower in an organization follow the lead of people higher than they are. This means that if you are in a patient room with a nursing assistant and you have patient contact and leave the room without washing your hands, you are telling that assistant that he or she does not need to wash his or her hands. Many clinical workers say:

• they are too busy to wash their hands
• their hands get dry from washing too much
• it takes too long
• the sinks aren't conveniently located

These are all issues that have solutions. But the bottom line is that behavior must change.
 
Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the online course "Hand Hygiene for Health Care Staff: Practical Steps to Protect Patients and Contain Infections." For more information on this and other courses in our library, go to http://www.hcprofessor.com.

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