Pathways to clean hands: highlights of successful hand hygiene implementation strategies in Europe

M Tannahill,L May-Michelangeli,C Reichardt,A Simon,P Gastmeier,E Leens,V Drouvot,E Mcfarlane,K Wilson,A P Magiorakos

doi:10.2807/ese.15.18.19560-en

Abstract

Hand hygiene is the most effective way to stop the spread of microorganisms and to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The World Health Organization launched the First Global Patient Safety Challenge - Clean Care is Safer Care - in 2005 with the goal to prevent HAI globally. This year, on 5 May, the WHO s initiative SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands, which focuses on increasing awareness of and improving compliance with hand hygiene practices, celebrated its second global day. In this article, four Member States of the European Union describe strategies that were implemented as part of their national hand hygiene campaigns and were found to be noteworthy. The strategies were: governmental support, the use of indicators for hand hygiene benchmarking, developing national surveillance systems for auditing alcohol-based hand rub consumption, ensuring seamless coordination of processes between health regions in countries with regionalised healthcare systems, implementing the WHO's My Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, and auditing of hand hygiene compliance.

Highlights

Ignaz Semmelweis first demonstrated in 1847 that good hand disinfection was able to prevent puerperal fever [1,2] and evidence continues to show that hand hygiene is the simplest, most effective way to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms and healthcareassociated infections (HAI) [3,4,5]
In 2005, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Alliance for Patient Safety, launched the First Global Patient Safety Challenge, Clean Care is Safer Care ( h t t p://w w w.w h o. i n t /g p s c/background/e n/index . html) [10], which targeted the prevention of HAI
Adherence of healthcare workers (HCW) to good hand hygiene practices is necessary during all aspects of patient care

Summary

Introduction

Ignaz Semmelweis first demonstrated in 1847 that good hand disinfection was able to prevent puerperal fever [1,2] and evidence continues to show that hand hygiene is the simplest, most effective way to prevent cross-transmission of microorganisms and healthcareassociated infections (HAI) [3,4,5]. Factors found to be associated with poor hand hygiene practices include, among others: being an assistant physician or assistant nurse rather than a physician or a nurse, working on a weekday, having many hand hygiene opportunities per hour of patient care, performing activities with high risk of cross-transmission of microorganisms, working in high-risk areas and wearing gloves and gowns [4,6,7]. In 2009, it launched the SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands (http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/en) initiative, highlighting the importance of hand hygiene and providing guidelines and toolkits for the best implementation of hand hygiene [9,11,12]

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion