Hand Washing

Hand Washing
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Introduction
Hand hygiene is one of the goals of the WHO’s “clean care is safe care” initiative and one of the key initiatives set out by the World Alliance for Patient Safety’s Global Patient Safety Challenge. The hands of the health care givers are the most common route of transmission of microorganisms from patient to patient and from the patient to the environment (Curtis, Scott, & Cardosi, 2005).
While delivering health care, the health care provider’s hands are continuously in contact with the surfaces and the substances such as intact or non-intact skin and even mucous membrane. These hands can facilitate the spread of the microbes throughout the health care environment within some few hours (Luby et al., 2005).
Relevance of Hand Hygiene to the student’s current or future area of healthcare practice
According to research, it has been proven that good hygiene practices reduce incidences of infection, thus making it relevant especially to those handling the diseased people. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) sometimes called nosocomial infections can be fatal and severe to the patient (Blanchard, 2007). Those who visit the hospital are in the hope that they will receive treatment and care not additional diseases and further suffering.
HAI’s bring can be difficult to treat and may take a lot of time especially when the organism involved is resistant to antibiotics. In United States of America alone HAI’s is said to be responsible for about 90,000 deaths and an additional burden of US$ 4.5-5.7 billion (Polin, Denson, & Brady, 2012). Programs that have championed the reduction in HAI’s have made it a strategic imperative. More attention has been focused on enhancing multiple interventions, including hand hygiene, promotion of hand washing in the workplace and measurement of compliance to hand wash.
Great challenge facing health care is currently, is the issue on Healthcare associated infections(HAI’s) since hands can easily become contaminated when delivering health care services. Students can use the above knowledge to help reduce the bu...