Now Wash Your Hands

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02 May 2018 | Updated 03 May 2018

World Hand Hygiene Day on May 5 focuses attention on hand hygiene in healthcare environs. Sepsis is estimated to affect more than 30 million patients every year worldwide - and a major cause of this is a lack of hygiene.

Meanwhile, Global Handwashing Day is another annual global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.

October's Global Handwashing Day was founded by the Global Handwashing Partnership as  an opportunity to design, test, and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times.

To read the report from last year - Click Here

 

World Hand Hygiene Day is organised in association with the World Health Organisation.

For the tenth year in a row, World Hand Hygiene Day is a cornerstone of the WHO’s campaign to galvanise action at the point of care and improve patient safety. This year’s theme is focused on preventing sepsis in healthcare. Sepsis is a potentially life-threatening infection. It kills 44,000 people in the UK and costs the national economy almost £16 billion each year.

 

To support World Hand Hygiene Day on May 5, Kimberly-Clark Professional is sharing Five Ways to improve hand hygiene standards within a healthcare environment.

While the risks of sepsis are real, there are simple steps that can be taken to help avoid infection. Kimberly-Clark Professional is sharing Five Ways to ensure hand hygiene in healthcare and other facilities.

 

1. Demonstrate Best Practice in Your Environment

Take the opportunity to demonstrate hand hygiene best practice. The WHO reports that one out of every 10 patients get an infection while receiving care in a hospital facility and up to 32% of patients receiving surgical care get a post-operative infection. Unfortunately, 51% of these cases are resistant to treatment with antibiotics. Practicing good hand hygiene is key to reducing these numbers and even for experts, reminders are a good idea.

 

2. Provide Quality Products

If you want staff onsite to operate as hygienically as possible, then providing quality, available and easily accessible products is the first step.

 

3. Track and Share Your Progress

It is vitally important to understand whether your efforts to improve hygiene are working. You can do this by performing audits on a specific ward or area. Simply monitor the number of staff, patients or visitors washing their hands correctly over a given period of time. Then repeat this process and look for improvements. Share the results with your staff to engage them in continuous improvement.

To download a free NHS audit tools to help - Click Here

 

4. Help People Understand How to Protect Themselves

KC has developed an essential tool for you to quickly and easily create customised posters and notices promoting hand hygiene in your environment.

To create your own poster that informs your staff on what they need to know to be safe - Click Here

 

 

5. Include Hand Hygiene as Part of Training

Make hand hygiene part of your standard training. Studies have shown that on average, 61% of health workers do not adhere to the recommended hand hygiene practices.  KC is offering a complimentary kit to help you promote hand hygiene.

To request your complimentary kit - Click Here

 

Article written by Cathryn Ellis | Published 02 May 2018

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