Hands washing and Infection Prevention
The Covid 19 pandemic sent the whole world into a hand-washing craze. Veronica buckets with diverse innovations flooded public workplaces and markets. Hand sanitizer business became the new gold rush and the price of soap soared high into outer space but the most jaw-dropping thing that happened was the sudden abundance of hand sanitizers and liquid soap on our hospital wards and even the outpatient departments. When there was no pandemic these items were as scarce as hen’s teeth, and sometimes even water for rinsing was hard to come by , let alone getting running water to do hand washing the right way. Health workers had to break infection prevention protocols on countless occasions due to these challenges. COVID 19 came to glorify hand washing and that is one of the few good things the pandemic brought to us.
Hand washing (or handwashing), also known as hand hygiene, is the act of cleaning one’s hands with soap (or equivalent materials) and water to remove viruses/bacteria/microorganisms, dirt, grease, or other harmful and unwanted substances stuck to the hands. Drying of the washed hands is part of the process as wet and moist hands are more easily recontaminated.
When should we wash our hands?
The World Health Organization recommends washing hands for at least 20 seconds before/after the following:
🔮Before and after caring for any sick person
🔮Before, during, and after preparing food
🔮Before eating
🔮After using the toilet (for urination, defecation, menstrual hygiene)
🔮After helping someone who just used the toilet
🔮After blowing one’s nose, or coughing or sneezing
🔮After touching an animal, animal feed or animal waste
🔮After touching garbage
Who should practice effective hand?
Every single person in the world should practice effective hand washing, COVID 19 has made that crystal clear to us all.
How can we promote hand-washing?
Antibacterial resistance and hospital acquired infections are on the rise these days in our health facilities and other healthcare settings, largely due to inefficient infection prevention techniques particularly, hand washing. Hospital acquired infections are associated with morbidity and mortality resulting in increased health cost, length of hospitalization, and unnecessary laboratory investigations. Hand washing has proven to be the most important, economical and easy measure to reduce or prevent infections but adherence to appropriate hand washing regimen remains suboptimal. However, aggressive education programs on hand washing, making enough hand washing equipment available, creation of tools to monitor, assess health workers and behavioral change can improve compliance with hand washing among healthcare workers and patients. Below are details of some strategies that can be employed to promote effective hand washing among patients, healthcare workers and the general public as well as the essence of hand washing in infection prevention.
Aggressive education programs on hand washing can help promote effective hand washing. Making healthcare workers (especially students), patients and the general public aware of the importance of infection prevention and teaching them how to do it appropriately, including practical demonstration of how it is done will make them appreciate and practice proper hand washing. Health workers should be thought how to perform correct hand washing before and after touching patient and patient’s environment, after contact with body fluids, and before performing clean and aseptic procedures. The in-service coordinators of health facilities should teach interns; those in the health field and those who are not , to observe proper hand washing, reminding them to always wash their hands with soap under running water. Great awareness among patients and family can also be of great benefit.
Making enough hand washing products available can also help promote hand washing. Hand washing stuff including hand towels or paper towels, dispensers for paper towels, soap dispensers and soap with alternatives should be available. ‘Veronica’ buckets containing enough clean water, at least two-thirds full should be placed at vantage points, together with hand washing products. Health promotion devices such as hand washing posters can be placed on dispensers and other vantage points to serve as a reminder to both health workers, patients and the general public to wash their hands. These will greatly facilitate effective hand washing.
Creation of tools to monitor and assess healthcare workers is yet another way to improve effective hand washing. Direct observation from a colleague or manager is one of the best ways of ensuring that good hand washing is being carried out. When people are aware they are being watched, they change their behavior accordingly. By having a colleague be the observer, the risk of being caught is too great and so hand washing gradually becomes a part of them. Peer reviews can be good way of monitoring and assessing health workers. This is where people from one hospital go to another hospital to see if the hospital is obeying the right ways of infection prevention precisely, proper hand washing techniques. Also, rewarding departments of the health facility who perform effective hand washing and punishing those who do not can help promote effective hand washing. Policies can be implemented for various departments to prepare and send report on compliance with effective hand washing to the health facility’s director and healthcare workers can remind their patients and even colleagues by simply asking, ‘have you washed your hands?’ these will in a way improve effective hand washing.
Why good hand washing habits are important.
As stated early on, hand washing is very important in infection prevention and this is because we use our hands in doing practically everything. The following are the essence of hand washing in infection prevention.
Hand washing prevents workers and patients from being infected and builds patient’s confidence in the health worker. Effective hand washing before and after touching the patient and his or her environment will prevent the spread of infection from the health worker to the patient and from the patient to the healthcare worker. Hand washing after contact with body fluids and before performing clean and aseptic procedure also prevent the spread of infection between patients as well as between patient and healthcare worker, which means that patient would be less exposed to hospital acquired infections and the treatment he or she is undergoing may possibly succeed.
It also reduces the time the patient spends at the hospital and the cost of healthcare. When proper hand washing is done, the spread of infections is prevented and the patient recovers rapidly depending on the severity of the condition he/she came with, making his/her stay at the hospital short. Healthcare cost will be reduced as additional medications and treatments would not be needed as well as their short stay in the hospital. This will in away contribute to the economy of the nation at large because, as the patient recovers fast, he/ she can go back to work and at the end pay tax to the government which will be used for developmental projects in the country. Promotion of hand washing among the general public will help prevent various infectious diseases as well.
With ever increasing hospital acquired infections and antibacterial resistance, there seems to be little sign of stopping infections but effective hand washing is one of the simple steps healthcare workers, patients and the general public can take to combat infections and to protect their patients as well as themselves from harm. Employing the above strategies to improve appropriate hand washing will go a long way to prevent infections among patients and healthcare workers.
Remember to wash your hands always
Ms.Seidu
& E.Y
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picture source: google
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