hand hygiene
Bare below the elbows
JimHutchinson | 26 Jul 2009
If your hands and wrists are not bare, if your nails aren't short and tidy, you can't wash your hands properly. We all learn this when we first go to the operating room and are introduced to the ritual of "scrubbing".
Well, it is time to bring the scrub to the wards. It's simple. We'll all take off our dirty white coats, roll up our sleeves, leave our rings and watches at home and scrub. Nothing fancy, no complicated rules about who has MRSA or VRE or C. difficile or ESBL, just good clean hands.
Here is a bit of foreshadowing of messaging for an upcoming campaign to encourage attention to simple measures to prevent infections.
and 
Catch it, Bin it, Kill it
JimHutchinson | 24 Jul 2009Video:
An excellent television ad produced by the UK Department of Health encouraging good hygiene in an effort to limit H1N1 influenza transmission.
Handwashing and C. difficile
Terry | 01 Oct 2008Ontario auditor claims poor hand hygiene and housekeeping standards helped the spread of C. difficile in Ontario hospitals.
The report's findings include:
- hospitals do not always properly sterilize surgical instruments
- ensure that rooms occupied by patients with [c. difficile] are adequately cleaned
- only 28% of physicians were complying with pilot hand hygiene program
- hospitals do not have systems to monitor use of protective equipment (gloves, gowns, masks, etc)
The director of infection protection and control at Toronto's University Health Network, Dr. Michael Gardam, says,
"We've known for quite a while that we need good housekeeping standards and guidelines to help hospitals know how much they're supposed to be cleaning and how often," [...] "All these things are issues that have been on the radar for quite a while."
Read the full article from Karen Howlett at The Globe and Mail online.
