Keeping our nursing heroes safe


Liam Smith, from Tork manufacturer Essity, looks at the daily challenges faced by nurses in keeping their hands clean and virus-free – despite being constantly rushed off their feet.


This year will be remembered as the year of COVID-19, but 2020 is also the year of the nurse.


The World Health Organization made nurses the focus of this year’s ‘Clean Your Hands Day’, long before many people had heard of the coronavirus. The WHO wanted to celebrate the vital role played by nurses and midwives in providing key health services, caring for mothers and children, giving lifesaving immunisations, looking after the elderly and meeting everyday health needs.


The public has never appreciated nurses as much as they have done in recent months in the wake of COVID-19. In fact, research carried out by Ipsos MRBI this summer revealed that nurses were the most trusted workers in Ireland. The company’s Veracity Index 2020 revealed that 97% of people trusted nurses compared with 95%, 47% and 30% who trusted doctors, senior politicians and estate agents respectively.


President Michael D Higgins paid his own tribute in June to the contribution made by Ireland’s nurses during the pandemic. During an address to graduates at Dublin City University’s School of Nursing he praised the “remarkable courage, compassion and generosity” shown by members of the profession during a time of national crisis.


Nurses have been at the front line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic, battling to save the sick and in many cases, contracting the virus themselves. As of 30 May, seven healthcare workers had died with COVID-19 in Ireland.


WHO’s Clean Your Hands message has been more important than ever this year in the face of the global pandemic since we know that the virus may be transferred from one person to another via contaminated hands.


However, nurses are under huge pressure to deliver care quickly and efficiently, and optimum hand hygiene is a time- consuming business.


Advice from the WHO is that good hand hygiene for healthcare workers should take between 40 and 60 seconds. Staff should wash their hands before touching a patient, before carrying out any aseptic procedure, after any exposure to body fluids, after touching a patient and after coming into contact with the patient’s surroundings.


The WHO also states that a healthcare worker’s visibly- soiled hands should be washed with soap and water and then thoroughly dried afterwards. If the hands are not visibly soiled, alcohol sanitiser may be used instead for a period of 30 seconds.


But when nurses and midwives are working long shifts and looking after scores of patients at a time, do they actually


10 | HEALTHCARE HYGIENE


have the time to wash or sanitise their hands for 30-60 seconds? And is there any way of speeding up the process?


Hand hygiene can never be skimped, according to the WHO. However, there are various ways of improving the efficiency of hand hygiene.


For example, hand washing and sanitising stations should be freely available and easy to locate. They should be kept well stocked at all times and dispensers must be easy to refill and use.


Systems such as the Tork Foam Soap Dispenser work well for hand washing in healthcare since the unit houses 2500 shots of soap – more than twice the amount of an average liquid soap dispenser. This means the dispenser is less likely to run out when a hand wash is urgently needed. The unit has also been designed to require low hand strength, which makes it particularly quick and easy to use.


Hand drying is a vital part of any hand hygiene regime since damp hands transmit more than double the amount of bacteria as dry hands. However, the wrong type of paper towel dispenser can slow up the hand drying process.


Low-capacity dispensers for folded towels will run out too quickly, forcing the nurse or midwife to waste valuable seconds trying to locate a towel elsewhere. Cleaners in charge of refilling these units may decide to compensate by ‘over-stuffing’ dispensers with more towels than they should hold. This makes it difficult for the user to pull out a towel from the bottom, which wastes valuable seconds.


Roll towel dispensers offer a higher capacity but some models are prone to jamming.


The Tork PeakServe Continuous Hand Towel works well in healthcare because the unit holds up to 2100 towels at a time which means it’s highly unlikely to run out between maintenance checks. The dispenser also gives out a towel in just three seconds, which helps to speed up the hand drying process. And its continuous delivery system means it will never jam.


A frequent, lengthy hand hygiene regime can take its toll on nurses’ hands and make their daily lives more difficult. A survey, carried out in December 2019, revealed that 93% of nurses had suffered skin conditions on their hands or wrists in the previous year.


The survey – carried out by the UK’s Royal College of Nursing – also found that 46% of the respondents rated the condition of their hands or wrists as either ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ and that over half of them experienced redness, itching, dryness or cracking of the hands. And most respondents attributed


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