A fundamental role


Practising hand hygiene is not a simple one-time activity that can be ticked off at the start of the day for compliance- sake: it is critical to effective infection prevention and for reducing the incidence of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs).


50-70% of HCAIs are transmitted by hands, adding an extra burden to nursing staff, and in turn, increasing the risk of AMR through over-use of antibiotics for something that the patient wasn’t initially being treated for.


It’s important that we promote regular and effective hand hygiene, using the principles set out in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) multimodal hand hygiene strategy, implemented according to the WHO 5-Moments of Hand Hygiene. This strategy is the single most effective way to help prevent the spread of infection and considers all factors that impact and influence hand hygiene.


It translates into practice the recommendations and is accompanied by a wide range of practical tools that healthcare associations can implement. The five key tactics for effective hand hygiene include system change, training, observation and feedback, reminders in the workplace, and creating a safety culture. This can be measured and regularly tracked using the hand hygiene self-assessment framework, which provides an overall score and evidence for where the focus should be for the facility.


The WHO multimodal strategy gives a useful framework and the benefits of using hand hygiene product protocols to wash, sanitise and care for hands are well known, but more needs to be done to improve hand hygiene compliance through accurate monitoring and data recording.


Using technology to drive compliance


Direct observation has for many years been the principal way in which hand hygiene has been measured. However, this method has been known to inflate compliance rates by up to 300%, contributing to a climate of complacency amongst healthcare managers and workers that hand hygiene compliance is better than reality.


Despite advances in direct observation over the years, HCAIs still pose a massive threat to patients, staff and visitors. It is no longer enough to treat the infection: we must prevent the spread before it becomes a problem.


The way to achieve this is by changing hand hygiene culture – through rigorous monitoring and effective feedback which can be achieved through electronic monitoring.


The adoption of electronic group hand hygiene compliance monitoring systems, calculated according to the WHO 5-Moments of Hand Hygiene, can deliver significant improvements in terms of hand hygiene compliance, helping embed good practice into our everyday working lives.


In supporting the WHO multimodal strategy for hand hygiene, electronic group monitoring systems have been shown to increase WHO 5-Moment hand hygiene compliance rates by a quarter, whilst decreasing hospital onset MRSA by 42%.


46 | HEALTHCARE HYGIENE twitter.com/TomoCleaning


These systems can provide hospital leaders with reliable, quantified data that tracks overall performance, providing regular feedback and clearly indicating where further effort is required to improve compliance.


By adopting this method, we can bring down infections, which in turn will reduce the demand for antibiotics whilst increasing patient safety.


Lord Jim O’Neill, who co-wrote ‘Superbugs: An Arms Race Against Bacteria’, recognised that infection prevention control is at the very heart of reducing antimicrobial resistance. He highlighted that: “poor practice speeds the pace of resistance and a lack of control provides opportunities for resistance to emerge and spread.”


We need to take every opportunity to prevent infection and the need to use antibiotics, and the opportunity starts with hand hygiene. We cannot underestimate the role it plays in tackling this global healthcare crisis.


www.scjohnson-professional.com


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