Hand Hygiene Compliance
Introduction
Healthcare-associated infection is a serious cause of mortality and morbidity among the patients. Hand hygiene has been a major concern since it is regarded to be a causative agent of various diseases (Ataee et al., 2017). Hands are used to handle various things including food entering the mouth hence their hygiene status is a matter of concern. Hence hand hygiene plays an important role in preventing the spread of contagious and infectious diseases as they form reservoirs of most microorganisms. Pittet, Boyce, & Allegranzi, 2017 also discovered that it is through hand hygiene the health safety of both the patient and the care provider can be assured as they interact during healthcare services delivery. This paper features the hand hygiene compliance and why it is important for the people to adhere to the measures regarding it in healthcare.
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Search Methodology
The healthcare journals were the main sources used to do the research especially those concerning hand hygiene. The electronic databases were also used which included Google Scholar, Academia Search, Ovid, CINAHL COMPLETE and MEDLINE and other text materials which were published in the last four years (Hebert, 2015)In searching for these articles, various search terms such as hand hygiene, nursing care, and infection control were used. This search methodology spawned….Show More….
Review of the Literature
According to the World Health Organization, approximately 3.2 million hospitals acquire infections in the United States every year. This has been realized to be caused by poor health workers’ hand hygiene which contributes to the spread of infectious diseases. Thus the association suggested that if hand hygiene would be comprehensively practiced in the hospitals, the cases of hospital-acquired infections would reduce significantly (Hebert, 2015). However, despite various campaigns including the Red Cross Society to promote hand hygiene noncompliance has remained a major concern in the healthcare setting. This is normally caused by some facts such as ignorance, lack of enough time, sink location, and forgetfulness which form the major hindrances to compliance (Lau, 2017). For instance, a nurse may be pressed to go for a short call while handling a patient hence forced to visit the toilet after which he or she may end up attending to the patient without washing the hands especially if he or she was in a critical condition. This promotes the chances of spreading dirt to the patient hence the probability of more infections.
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