Improve Hand Hygiene Compliance in Nursing Care
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.
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 385 review articles which were cut off through assessing the titles reducing them to 150 articles to review. To determine the most appropriate articles, some other criteria were used as Search mode including Academic Journals, Full text, Peer-reviewed, Boolean; language used was English. These further reduced the appropriate articles to 23 whereby 5 of them were eventually selected to be used in this literature review.
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.
Some approaches have been adopted to improve compliance including campaigns using various motivations. Here self-efficacy is necessary to convince the audience that one is confident in whatever they are advocating for. This is accompanied by the willingness and readiness to perform the expected behavior. Measuring hand hygiene is another approach whereby ensuring that every hospital implements a program in line with the CDC and develop the goals for compliance improvement (Ataee et al., 2017). Another approach is making the hand hygiene a habit whereby the people get used to it as part of them. Professional habits can be influenced by social habits hence when the practice sticks into people’s minds; it becomes easier to manage. Another approach is the creation of a multidisciplinary policy and a response team managed by the senior administrators which are aimed to insist the commitment of the organization to adhere to the hand-hygiene compliance (Boyce, 2017). The management should also offer training and education to the patients, staff, and families through the use of pocket cards and posters which will promote the spread of information. This also involves ensuring that the relevant materials and resource for compliance are available throughout the organization and strategic positions such as the exits and entrances to avail the information effectively. It is also recommendable that the hospital reinforces accountability by carrying out contests and rewarding the individuals who are best in complying with the hand-hygiene regulations to motivate the others to follow suit.
Conclusion
The practice of hand hygiene is critical, modest and an effective way to prevent the spread of contagious diseases. It can help prevent germs even those that are resilient to antibiotics hence becoming almost impossible to treat them. In the healthcare facilities, the spread of infections through poor hand hygiene hence the workers especially the nurses who handle multiple patients are supposed to maintain high standards of hygiene. However, most of the hospitals are associated with the chronic spread of hospital-diseases simply because of noncompliance to hand hygiene. Surprisingly, the health attendants are the first people to spread the information about the hand hygiene while their workplaces are the ones normally affected. A report by the American Nursing Association found out that most of them do hand-washing almost halftime the number they actually should. It is for this case that finds almost all the hospitals having healthcare-related infections. Some measures to ensure compliance include setting disciplinary policies for hand-hygiene and reinforcing accountability.
References
- Ataee, R. A., Ataee, M. H., Tavana, A. M., & Salesi, M. (2017). Bacteriological Aspects of Hand Washing: A Key for Health Promotion and Infections Control. International Journal of Preventive Medicine, 31-40. doi:10.4103/2008-7802.201923
- Boyce, J. M. (2017). Electronic monitoring in combination with direct observation as a means to significantly improve hand hygiene compliance. American journal of infection control, 45(5), 528-535. Press.
- Hebert, J. (2015). Safety solutions: Infection control. Improving hand hygiene through a multimodal approach. Nursing Management, 46(11), 27-30. doi:10.1097/01.NUMA.0000472766.11354.ef
- Lau, C. H. U. N.-L. I. N. G. (2017). FACTORS AFFECTING HAND HYGIENE COMPLIANCE IN INTENSIVE CARE UNITS: A systematic review. S.l.: OPEN DISSERTATION PRESS.
- Pittet, D., Boyce, J. M., & Allegranzi, B. (2017). Hand hygiene: A handbook for medical professionals. Press.