Hand Wash

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Here is a question to ponder. What can you do in 40 seconds that can save lives? How about in 20 seconds? The answer is hand wash and/or hand rub. This the least amount of times recommend to accomplish the tasks by World Health Organizations (Hand, 2014). According to the CDC, hand hygiene (i.e. hand wash, hand rub) is one of the easiest thing a person can do to prevent the spread of infections (Hand, 2014). The CDC conducted a survey in 2011 to find the number of healthcare associated infection (HAI) in the U.S. An estimated of 722,000 HAI were discovered (Healthcare, 2014). The highest number of HAI originated from surgical site infections from inpatient surgery with 157,000 infections (Healthcare, 2014).
How does this relate to us? As future cardiovascular technicians, we will encounter patients by mean of invasive and/or non-invasive procedures with severe heart conditions requiring heart transplant. Based on the statistics present previously, one of the patient will acquired an infections due to poor hand hygiene compliance. The reason is not due to limited handwashing station, time need to wash hand, or poor awareness of hospital protocols. Researcher found that when “high ranking person [physician or nurses] in the room did not perform hand hygiene, other health care workers [technician or aides] were significantly less likely to
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All of which is encounter daily in a hospital setting, therefore hand hygiene is crucial in the first step to prevent the spread of infection. Let change the negative trend of hand hygiene found in Ms. Lankford’s research study by perform appropriate hand hygiene in the presence of physicians, nurses, supervisors, managers, and peers not for recognition but because it is the right thing to

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