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The Importance Of Hand Hygiene In Healthcare

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According to McGuckin (2015), hand hygiene is one of the most effective practices that healthcare workers can perform to reduce the spread of hospital accord infections (P. 349). Unfortunately, in spite of its relatively easy application, compliance by healthcare workers is relatively low. At my clinical unit, I have observed healthcare workers go in and out of patient’s room without proper hand hygiene. hand sanitizers strategically placed next to the door handle to each patient’s room and the convenience of a sink at the entrance of each patient’s room. Noncompliance of hand hygiene by the healthcare workers can lead to the spread of deadly hospital acquired infections such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus from staff, to patients, and visitors to the healthcare facility. The reasons for noncompliance of hand hygiene by healthcare workers include: high patient to nurses ratio, inadequate training, and lack of motivation. Nurses at my clinical …show more content…
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities can improve compliance and reduce incidences of preventable infections by retraining staff, reducing the patient to healthcare worker ratio, and setting up a monitoring system to monitor adherence to hand hygiene. The monitoring system should be used as an instrument to improve safety and not a tool to discipline workers. Workers should be encouraged to hold each other accountable. An award system may also be implemented where units or personnel with the highest rate of compliance are recognized. According to the Journal of Community Nursing 2014, "Although it is not possible to sterilize hands, the number of bacteria can be greatly reduced by good hand hygiene practice (P. 1)”. However, an increase in compliance to hand hygiene by healthcare workers, significantly help decrease the spread of

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