Hand Hygiene Blog

One hundred years ago, in 1918, an influenza pandemic broke out. The so-called Spanish flu killed  20-50 million  people, many more than the First Ward War that ended the same year  [1] . Could it happen again? What can we do to avoid it? What is the role of hand hygiene in this story?

Many techniques exist how to handrub, most of them are based on the so-calles WHO 6-step protocol . As we previously summarized , this has limitations; it takes long to perform, quite hard to remember and therefore its compliance is pretty low. For these reasons, several alternative protocols exist , but we have limited data on the efficacy of these alternatives.

In our previous posts, we described  what the fluorescent method  is , and  where should it be applied . But is the fluorescent method validated microbiologically? How can we know that the shining areas are really disinfected? Now, we discuss it.

A couple days ago, a new scientific study was published , about Enterococcus bacteria with increased alcohol tolerance. One day later, Reuters quoted it using a bit more shocking title; „ Superbugs now also becoming resistant to alcohol disinfectants ”. It really sounds terrific. How bad it really is?

Preventing healthcare-associated infections is a responsibility of everyone in a hospital. Still, infection prevention and control activities need to be organized by competent experts  [1] . Many reports claim a shortage of qualified infection control doctors and nurses  [2] . What does “qualified” actually means?

Last time, we wrote about the  two most important standards for testing the efficacy of handrubs ; the European CEN  EN 1500   and the American  ASTM E-1174 . Now we summarize the main weaknesses of these standards.

Hand hygiene with alcohol-based hand rub is considered to be the most efficient tool to prevent the spread of nosocomial infections. In addition to compliance – performing hand hygiene at appropriate frequency – the efficacy of hand hygiene technique has key importance.

Handrubs may have very  different composition . There are several standards that can help us to compare the effectiveness of any products. The two most commonly used standard procedures are the  EN 1500  standard (developed by CEN, the  European Committee for Standardization ) and the ASTM E-1174 standard (by the  FDA ’s Tentative Final Monograph – TFM)  [1] .

Hand hygiene (HH) is believed to be the most efficient tool in fighting hospital-acquired infections. Despite years of effort, caregivers’ HH compliance remain low. In this study we investigated how the Semmelweis Scanner can result HH quality improvement through automated training.

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...