The World Health Organization has ranked Dublin’s Mater Private Hospital as the best hospital in Europe for Hand Hygiene. The WHO Save Lives: Clean Your Hands annual global campaign was launched in 2009.
On 5 May each year, the campaign aims to mobilise hospitals to focus on one aspect of hand hygiene promotion. The call to action for 5 May 2011 was ‘track your progress, plan actions, and aim for hand hygiene sustainability’. Almost 15,000 healthcare facilities from 150 countries worldwide responded to the campaign. Hospitals were encouraged to complete a dedicated Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework, developed for each individual healthcare setting. The WHO Hand Hygiene Award, introduced this year, was conceived as a platform to recognise, honour and celebrate those hospitals and healthcare workers who used their enthusiasm and knowledge to improve patient safety through the successful implementation of this framework and the WHO multimodal strategy in their healthcare facility. The Mater Private Hospital has consistently come out top in Ireland in the HSE Hand Hygiene Compliance Audit, achieving first place nationally among 44 acute hospitals since private hospitals were included in the audit. The hospital recorded a compliance rate of 94.8% for October 2012, while the overall rate of compliance nationally for the period was 84.3%, according to the most recent HSE report. The HSE requires acute hospitals to undertake biannual hand hygiene compliance audits in seven randomly selected wards and observe 30 opportunities per ward. Healthcare workers were observed for their compliance against the WHO’s ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’, measured using the national standard operating procedure (SOP) by the HSE’s trained, validated auditors. “The Mater Private is delighted to have achieved the highest placing among European hospitals for 2011-2013 – being recognised as the best in Europe for hand hygiene reflects our 100% commitment to being highly proactive in the area of infection prevention and control,” said Ann Higgins, infection prevention nurse, Mater Private Hospital. “Hand hygiene is a crucially important part of infection prevention and we have an established rigorous training and assessment programme in place which is mandatory for all our staff. We carry out monthly audits of compliance with the WHO 5 Moments of Hand Hygiene, providing immediate feedback and education on the spot.”
