www.homehealthcarenurseonline.com In this observational study, the perceptions, compliance, techniques, and contextual issues of hand hygiene practices among community clinicians (nurses) during 103 hand hygiene opportunities (based on the World Health Organization “Five Moments for Hand Hygiene”) in 40 patient care episodes were examined. Compliance with standard hand hygiene practices was gen...

OBJECTIVES (1) To define and characterize knowledge of effective hand hygiene and its scientific basis among practicing facial plastic surgeons; (2) to review the existing literature of, basis for, and guidelines on hand washing in clinical practice; and (3) to motivate and facilitate optimum hand hygiene among facial plastic surgeons. METHODS National Web-based physician survey and literatur...

n engl j med 362;3 nejm.org january 21, 2010 275 To the Editor: Wachter and Pronovost (Oct. 1 issue)1 question the “no-blame” paradigm in patient-safety improvement and suggest the adoption of explicit punitive approaches to poorly performing physicians. We counsel caution. In a longitudinal study over a 2-year period in a large facility,2 we found that penalties did not deter undesirable behav...

BACKGROUND Many of the healthcare associated infections (HCAIs) are transmitted by healthcare workers' hands, which actively contributes to transferring pathogens from patient to patient and within the healthcare environment. Hand hygiene is the easiest and cheapest method for preventing HCAIs. The article presents the compliance with hygiene procedures in a group of medical students of the Wro...

One function of skin microbiota is to resist colonization and infection by external microorganisms. We sought to detect whether the structure of the hand microbiota of 34 healthcare workers (HCW) in a surgical intensive care unit mediates or modifies the relationship between demographic and behavioral factors and potential pathogen carriage on hands after accounting for pathogen exposure. We us...

Introduction / objectives Compliance of hand hygiene is frequently less than optimal and heavily depends on the dedication of the key opinion leaders. There are few tools to support their role model for hand hygiene. Dedicated days, information campaigns and similar activities lead to tremendous, but short-lived impact on the hand hygiene compliance. Psychological studies have shown, that a pub...

Alcohol-based gels have been introduced recently in many hospitals worldwide for hand antisepsis. We investigated the antimicrobial efficacy of ten gels and four rinses according to European standards (EN 1500). No gel met the EN 1500 requirements within 30 s of application, whereas all hand rinses did. The tested hand gels should be considered a retrograde step for hand hygiene because the app...

Although many studies have investigated bacteria on the hands of health-care workers and caregivers, few have looked at microbiological contamination on the hands of the general adult public. This study investigated faecal bacteria on the hands of commuters in five UK cities. Of the 404 people sampled 28% were found to have bacteria of faecal origin on their hands. A breakdown by city showed th...

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) such as facemasks and intensified hand hygiene may be effective in preventing influenza infections in households. It may be equally important that household members, especially children, can learn to use, maintain and tolerate these measures. We monitored adherence and tolerability of these NPI within a cluster-randomized trial in households with influenza...