MRSA

National Clean Your Hands Campaign

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) national Clean Your Hands campaign

There have been many technological advances in clinical care over the last century, one of the most fundamental and enduring features of good practice is hand hygiene. It is a basic measure to get right but as the NPSA’s Clean Your Hands campaign indicates, it is an area requiring constant vigilance.

The Trust is committed to improving patient safety and has been chosen to become a partner with the NPSA, in this national campaign, to improve hand hygiene for staff, patients and visitors. Hands are an ideal repository for microbes which can cause infections. This can be greatly reduced by good hand hygiene and we all know that prevention is always better than a cure.

Healthcare associated infection can be reduced by 10-50% when healthcare staff regularly clean their hands and research has shown that it is most effective to use an alcohol hand rub which will reduce the number of bacteria on the hands.

The campaign is going live in January 2005 and has 3 parts to it:-

• Alcohol hand rub near each bed where possible and in other areas, giving all clinical staff personal alcohol hand rub to carry with them.
• Publicity campaign informing staff, patients and visitors about the importance of hand hygiene.
• Encouraging staff, patients and visitors to challenge staff when they see them not cleaning their hands

We are doing our bit by arranging a series of demonstrations in the restaurant to promote good hand hygiene practices, with the aid of the bug busting unit. This magical machine will show you the areas on your hand you routinely miss when washing them. Patients have been asked to take part in a poster competition to design one that encourages hand hygiene. There will also be badges, stickers and posters encouraging hand hygiene, some featuring our own staff Hand Hygiene Champions. Based in each area, these champions will help the Infection Control Team to co-ordinate the campaign.

Remember “CLEAN HANDS SAVE LIVES”