Ideas That Work: Take Hand Hygiene to the Next Level

Practical pearls from your colleagues

To reduce hospital-acquired infections among surgery patients, don’t let your fingernails grow beyond your fingertips and understand that, in many cases, less handwashing can be more, according to guidance issued by multiple organizations earlier this year.

The updated recommendations appear in the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s (SHEA) journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. The work was a collaboration among SHEA, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, the American Hospital Association and The Joint Commission.

The reason to wash hands less often and use alcohol-based sanitizers instead is to prevent cracks in hands that could lead to infections among patients as well as providers, according to the guidance.

To make this goal more achievable, additional sanitizer dispensers should be added to facilities to increase easy opportunities for staff to use them.

Other guidance includes having sinks dedicated solely to handwashing, so employees don’t come into contact with infectious fluids that could have been poured there earlier in the day. OSM