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What Do the National Patient Safety Goals Say About Hand Hygiene?

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- December 14, 2017

The Joint Commission’s (JC) National Patient Safety Goals, what are effective from 2018 January are available now. What does the document say about hand hygiene?

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Popular posts from this blog

Fluorescent Hand Hygiene Control

What is the fluorescent trial and how can we apply it? For testing one’s hand hygiene, the two most commonly used methods are the microbiological sampling and the fluorescent dying method. In this post, we discuss the fluorescent method in details. The fluorescent method was developed to assess the hand hygiene technique. Health-care workers should perform handrubbing as they usually do, the only difference is that the handrub contains a fluorescent dye. After the hand hygiene event, hands should be placed under (harmless) UV-A light. Regions of hand surface treated with proper amount of fluorescent handrub glow, where untreated areas remain dark. Figure 1: Images of a hand recorded in visible light (A) and in UV light (B) during the fluorescent method. ( Source: HandInScan) The phenomenon of fluorescence occurs when a substance (the dye) absorbs light (energy) and instantly reemits light at a longer wavelength. In this special case, the absorbed light is in the ultravio

Alternatives for the WHO 6-step Protocol

- February 15, 2018

Last time we wrote about the current 6-step hand hygiene protocol, which formed the base of the EN1500 and WHO hand hygiene recommendations. There are two problems with the 6-step protocol, that are often reported. First, it takes too long to perform. Kampf 2008 reported that performing the 6-steps protocol accurately lasts on average 75 s, while the guideline only requires 30 s. Figure 1 : The 6-step from WHO ‘How to handrub’ and ‘How to handwash’ guide [1]. Second, according to several studies, 6 steps are too many to remember. In Silva 2014 , healthcare professionals were asked about hand hygiene; 98.6% of them replied that they feel very motivated to perform hand hygiene, yet, 38% failed to report the steps of the hand washing technique adequately. Arias 2015 evaluated the compliance of the 6-step by direct observation, and found that while the first two step’s compliance was 100%, thumbs (step5) and fingertips (step6) were achieved only in 15% and 37% of the cas

Ignaz Semmelweis

- March 15, 2018

Who was he & why are we so proud of his legacy?

How to Handrub?

- February 02, 2018

Taylor 1978 examined the hand surface coverage during hand hygiene with alcohol, and found that 89% missed some parts of their hands. Missed parts were usually the thumbs and fingertips .

Healthcare-Associated Infection Surveillance in Europe

- January 19, 2018

Many European countries created national systems for the surveillance of Healthcare-associated infections (HAI), due to the different definitions and methodology of data collection comparison between the countries was impossible before. The HELICS project (Hospitals in Europe Link for Infection Control through Surveillance) was the first step towards the standardization of HAI data [ 1 , 2 ]. HELICS was a Europe-wide HAI surveillance program launched in 1994, mainly focusing on surgical site infections [3] .

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