If healthcare provider hands could talk
If healthcare provider hands could talk, they would tell you that:
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They can offer hope, healing, and comfort
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Then can create, protect, and defend
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They can also be the route of transmission for pathogens.1
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80% of hospital staff who dressed wounds infected with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) carried the organism on their hands for up to three hours!
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60% of hospital staff, within 1/2 hour of contact with patients with Clostridium difficile infection, were contaminated without even having touched the patient, from merely returning drug charts to the ends of beds!
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In an ICU study, 40% of all patient-nurse interactions resulted in the same species of Klebsiella pneumoniae transmission to healthcare workers' hands, lasting up to 150 minutes, even with contact as slight as touching a patient's shoulder!
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Meanwhile, washing with soap and water virtually eradicated these organisms!
With your help, they can also make a difference by:
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building hand hygiene into simple routines, such as when you use aseptic techniques when starting IVs or inserting catheters
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practicing spontaneous, automatic hand hygiene activities when entering and leaving the clinical setting
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modelling optimal hand hygiene activities to peers and in the home to your family members
1 Stone, S.P. J of the Royal Soc. Medicine. 2001; 94(6): 278-281. Reprinted by Mitka, M. in the Journal of the American Medical Association November 3, 2009. 302(17).
