Infection Control
Clean Your Hands | Saving Lives
The 'cleanyourhands' campaign is a national initiative aiming to improve hand hygiene compliance by all NHS staff, consequently reducing the level of health care associated infection. The desired outcome is a sustained behavioural change, resulting in high compliance with hand hygiene as a normal feature of all aspects of health care.
National campaign website (external site)
Two themes have run throughout the second year of the campaign;
- Point of Care
- The Power of One - role for everyone in improvement
Hand hygiene needs to be performed at the critical moment and place, and be seen and understood to be an integral part of care. The point of care is where three elements coincide at the same time in any given place:
- The patient
- The healthcare worker
- Care involving contact
On the wards you will have seen new ‘cleanyourhands campaign posters. You may be in one of the new ‘I can...’ posters. You will have seen the new ‘point of care’ stickers. You will have been included in the hospital-wide ‘hand hygiene compliance’ audits. The results are moving in the right direction but now we need to focus on standard of hand hygiene.
- If you are providing patient care yourself - you can make the difference.
- As clinical leader - you can be a powerful and positive role model.
- If you are a board level decision maker - keep hand hygiene on the radar.
Infection Rates (external site)
Healthcare associated infection (HCAI) remains a major problem.
Many of these infections are associated with the use of indwelling medical devices, but contaminated hands of healthcare providers are the commonest cause of transmission of infections to patients.
If only 15% of these infections were prevented by achievable improvements in clinical practice, HCAI would be avoided in 45 000 patients each year and £150 million worth of NHS resources saved.