A mobile hand hygiene training and assessment tool is being employed at one Trust to offer the infection control team a labour-saving device to help ensure good levels of hand hygiene compliance and also educate staff about good hand-washing technique. SUZANNE CALLANDER reports.
The importance of hand hygiene in infection control was first demonstrated over 150 years ago by Semmelweiss.1 Despite this knowledge, according to figures from the World Health Organization (WHO), there are an estimated 1.4 million cases of healthcare associated infection (HCAI) at any given time, globally.
Handwashing is a simple, low-cost action that can help prevent the spread of many healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) and there is much good quality evidence available to show that microbes causing HCAI are most frequently spread between patients on the hands of health- care workers.
Good clinician hand hygiene has long been recognised as having a significant contribution to patient safety. However, it remains a challenge for all infection control departments to ensure high hand hygiene compliance rates – requiring staff to consistently wash their hands at the right time and in the right way, as stipulated by the WHO guidelines on hand hygiene in healthcare.
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