Hand Hygiene Blog

In our  previous post , we described what the fluorescent method is, and how to apply it to examine hand hygiene technique. Now, we will present some of the good practices, settings, where the fluorescent method should be applied. At the Medical Faculty of the University of Debrecen (Hungary), the fluorescent method was applied to test the effectiveness of surgical hand rub technique. In the 2013/2014 academic year, 285 third-year medical students were involved in a survey; surgical and rubbing technique were investigated twice with the fluorescence method during the semester. The most common insufficiently disinfected areas were thumbs and fingertips. The number of students with unsatisfactory surgical hand disinfection was significantly lower in the second survey. Identifying students who failed to perform provided the tutor the opportunity to pay special care and attention to those, and help them to correct their technique  [1] . At the Medical Faculty of the Technical Universi

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