National Handwashing Awareness Week 2023

• Today marks the beginning of National Handwashing Awareness Week! Understand how handwashing is an essential part of a nurse’s infection prevention protocol. 
• Learn when to wash your hands, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) to best protect yourself and your patients. 
• Review proper handwashing and sanitization practices to ensure you’re doing everything you can to build safe habits. 

December 5-11, 2023 is National Handwashing Awareness Week. Healthcare providers play an essential role in preventing infection through proper handwashing techniques because their hands can become a route for infection transmission.

They check sick patients all the time, and hands, if not washed properly, can become a route of infection transmission from one person to another. Therefore, the major responsibility of maintaining proper hand hygiene falls on the shoulders of healthcare providers.

Healthcare providers keep washing their hands countless times in a 12-hour shift. However, a study suggests that nurses complied with handwashing procedures 42% of the time and physicians 38% of the time.

Therefore, healthcare providers need to pay more attention to proper handwashing techniques as they serve as the best defense against the spread of infections from one person to another.

Healthcare providers need to wash their hands countless times for plenty of reasons. Therefore, it becomes hard to decide if they should wash their hands or not.

To make it easy, the World Health Organization has summed up five moments of hand washing. These are the times when healthcare providers should definitely wash their hands.

Five moments of hand hygiene can be described as:

Immediately Before Touching the Patient

When you visit the patient, make sure to wash your hands just before that, even if you do not have to touch the patient, because you may end up touching things that the patient may touch later and catch those germs.

Washing hands before touching the patient is essential to protect the patient from the germs you might be carrying on your hands from previous activities.

Before Aseptic/Clean Procedure

Washing your hands is necessary before any procedure, such as cannulation, blood withdrawal, prepping for surgery, giving an intravenous infusion, and various other tasks. It helps prevent the spread of germs through your hands and protects the patient from their own germs.

During invasive procedures, patients are even more susceptible to infections if aseptic measures are not taken properly.

After Body Fluid Exposure Risk

During procedures, it is common to come in contact with a patient’s bodily secretions, such as blood, saliva, fecal matter, and urine. To protect yourself, staff members, and the environment from the spread of germs, wash your hands immediately after the procedure, even if you are wearing gloves.

Dispose of your gloves after every patient’s procedure, and thoroughly wash your hands.

After Touching a Patient

After you have examined the patient and touched them or their surroundings, it is imperative to wash your hands to protect yourself, the visitors, the staff, and the environment from the germs spread.

The surroundings of the patient often also contain microorganisms. Therefore, if you touch them only, you should wash your hands thoroughly as they can become a route for infections to spread, especially if the patient has a respiratory tract infection that spreads through respiratory droplets.

After Touching the Patient’s Surroundings

Even if you touch the patient’s surroundings and not the patient, wash your hands properly. The surroundings of the patient can include anything such as a bed, bed rails, linen, call bell, TV remote control, light switches, table, bedside chart, and bedside locker. It also includes the personal belongings of the patient, such as books, mobility aids, a chair, a footstool, and a monkey bar.

Washing your hands after touching the patient’s belongings helps protect you, the staff, and the environment from harmful germs. Patient surroundings should be cleaned with a disinfectant daily. But still, they may contain microbes that can cause infection. Therefore, washing your hands after touching the patient’s surroundings can help curb the infection spread.

How to Wash Your Hands Properly?

Washing your hands properly also plays a role in killing microbes. Make sure you wash your hands with running water and soap for at least 20 seconds to get those resistant microbes killed. If you wash them with a little water or for just five seconds, the microbes may still prevail on your hands.

Once you make lather with soap, rub your hands together immediately across all surfaces of your hands and wrists. Thoroughly wash the back of your hands, wrists, and the area between your fingers and under your fingernails. Often, these areas contain germs, and one might ignore them during washing.

Remove watches and rings while examining the patient and washing your hands because they may interfere with efficient handwashing.

After washing your hands, dry them one-time using a paper towel, or it is best to use hot air dryers that dry your hands instantly and have no chance of contamination.

Can Hand Sanitizers Be Used to Clean Hands?

If your hands are not visibly soiled, or there is no running water and soap, you can use an alcohol-based formulation to sanitize your hands. That is well tolerated and fast, compared to washing hands with soap and water.

Alcohol-based sanitizers help kill most germs, but they cannot kill Clostridium difficile- a bacterium that causes life-threatening diarrhea- a common healthcare-associated infection.

The Bottom Line

Handwashing is essential in preventing infection spread, especially for healthcare providers in close contact with sick people. As a nurse, make a habit of washing hands at five moments, as demonstrated by the WHO. It will benefit not only your patients but yourself as well.

Make sure you wash your hands with running water and disinfecting soap for at least 20 seconds to get rid of all microbes. However, if you do not have soap and water available, you can sanitize your hands with an alcohol-based formulation to get your hands free of most germs.

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