Hand Hygiene

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Hand Hygiene

• What should you do
• and what do we do?

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When should I wash my hands with Soap and Water?
When should I wash my hands with Alcohol Gel?

• Soap and water
• It takes approximately three minutes to wash and
  dry your hands effectively.
• Use when the hands are visibly soiled. The soap
  and water will wash away the contamination.
• Use when in contact with a patient who has
  diarrhoea - alcohol gel wont work.
• Use if the gel starts to feel sticky on your
  hands.

• Alcohol gel
• Very quick and effective.
• Use between patients.
• Use when entering or leaving a ward.
• Use after removing gloves
• Doesnt work against Clostridium difficile or any
  of the diarrhoea causing viruses. Use soap and
  water instead.

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Ability of Hand Hygiene Agents to Reduce Bacteria
on Hands
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When washing hands with soap and water use this
technique
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Handwashing - Techniques

• Always wet your hands before you put soap on
  it will help to stop them getting dry
• Make sure you dry them properly so they dont
  get chapped
• These are the areas of the hands that people
  usually miss

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Alcohol Gel

• This kills 99.8 of bugs living on your hands
• The gel contains hand moisturisers to keep your
  hands in good condition therefore using alcohol
  gel is much kinder to the hands than
  soap and water
• Alcohol gel should only be used on visibly clean
  hands. So if your hands look visibly dirty wash
  them.

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Use this technique to clean your hands when using
alcohol gel
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Squirt once or twice into the palm of your left
hand
Dip your right hand fingers into the gel making
contact with your left palm
Transfer the remaining gel into your right palm
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Dip your left hand fingers into the gel making
contact with the right palm
Then rub the remaining gel all over your hands,
make sure you rub the backs of your hands too.
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We have been auditing our staffs hand hygiene
every month since 2005

• We base our audit tool on the World Health
  Organisations (WHO) recommendations of when
  hospital staff should wash their hands

• Our staff should clean their hands
• Before patient contact
• Before an aseptic task
• After body fluid exposure
• After patient contact
• After contact with the patient surroundings

WHO (2007)
We conduct unannounced hand hygiene audits every
month in all areas where patients are cared for.
The audits last 20 minutes and are conducted by
an army of trained auditors (more than 100). who
are nurses, physios, radiologists and other
healthcare staff. They feedback the audit results
to the nurse in charge of each area. The results
are also presented at key meetings, published in
the Trust News and sent to all executives,
general managers and senior nurses and doctors.
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This shows how the hand hygiene of our staff has
improved over time
but we could do better and we are continuing to
work at it.