Speeding up hospital hygiene
http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Hand_ Hygiene_Why_How_and_When_Brochure.pdf
Liam Mynes, from Tork manufacturer Essity, looks at ways of improving hand hygiene efficiency in healthcare, when medical workers are constantly rushing from A to B to tend to their patients.
It is a constant challenge for healthcare workers to look after large numbers of patients while also maintaining a high level of care. And adhering to good hand hygiene practices is an important part of that care.
Medical staff need to cleanse their hands frequently to avoid the risk of passing infections and viruses on from patient to patient. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), staff should wash their hands before touching a patient, before carrying out any aseptic procedure, after any exposure to body fluid, after touching a patient and after touching the patient’s surroundings.
WHO also states that a healthcare worker’s visibly-soiled hands should be washed with soap and water for between 40 and 60 seconds and then carefully dried to ensure a thorough clean. If the hands are not visibly soiled, an alcohol gel may be used instead for a period of 30 seconds.
But when healthcare staff are working long shifts and looking after scores of patients at a time, do they actually have the time to wash or sanitise their hands for 30-60 seconds? And is there any way of speeding up the process?
WHO is firm on this point: hand hygiene can never be skimped. Each hand wash should involve thoroughly cleaning the palms, fingers and backs of the hands using soap and water. The hands should then be thoroughly dried with a single-use towel.
However, there are various ways in which the efficiency of 44 | HEALTHCARE HYGIENE
the process may be improved. For example, hand washing and sanitising stations in any healthcare facility should be plentiful, easy to locate and well stocked at all times. All dispensers for soap and paper should also be easy to refill and quick and easy to use to speed up hand hygiene.
For example, the dispenser for Tork Foam Soaps has been designed to require a particularly low push-force to make it easy to use. Each refill houses 2,500 shots of soap – more than twice the amount of an average liquid soap dispenser. This means the dispenser is less likely to run out of soap when a hand wash is urgently needed.
http://www.insidescience.org/news/wait-dont- throw-away-hand-sanitizer-yet
Drying the hands is a vital part of any hand hygiene regime since damp hands transmit more than double the amount of bacteria as dry hands. While air dryers rarely feature at hospital wash stations where hygiene is of paramount importance, the wrong type of paper towel dispenser can also slow up the hand drying process.
For example, dispensers for folded towels that have a low capacity will run out too quickly, forcing the healthcare worker to waste valuable seconds trying to locate a towel elsewhere. Cleaners in charge of refilling these units may decide to compensate for this lower capacity 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, causing frustration while also wasting valuable seconds.
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