Historical background
In the early 19th century.,Semmelweis ,a Hungarian physician ,provided the first evidence that hand decontamination can markedly reduce the incidence of puerperal fever and maternal mortality. Semmelweis became insane and ended up in a mental asylum ,propagating the importance of hand hygiene .Even today making health care workers understand the importance of hand hygiene is one of the biggest challenges faced by Infection control practitioners.
WHEN
20-30 secs for hand rub and 40-60 seconds for hand wash
Measures to improve hand hygiene.
Training: Ensure HCWs not only attend regular, ongoing training, but that they demonstrate the technique.
Monitoring the hand hygiene compliance rate and providing performance feed back to staff.
Ensuring that adequate resources for hand hygiene are made available
A piece of Advice To the health care workers-
The patients are living, breathing humans not just a number of incidences of “infections.”. Please perform hand hygiene .Ultimately what does it take ,Just a minute of your time and your patients will thank you for the rest of their lives.
And to the patients -
Speak up for clean hands !!! Ask your health care providers to perform hand hygiene ,before examining you.
Though not a feminist I would like to end this blog by sharing a fact ,women are far better at hand washing when compared to men. !!