The World Health Organization has ranked Dublin’s Mater Private Hospital as the best hospital in Europe for hand hygiene. ANN HIGGINS, infection prevention and control nurse, Mater Private Hospital, recently accepted an award, on behalf of the hospital, for hand hygiene excellence.
Since the World Health Organization launched its first global patient safety challenge, Clean care is safe care, in May 2005, thousands of healthcare facilities worldwide have risen to the challenge and signed up to this most important of interventions in reducing healthcareassociated infections (HCAI) The programme was relaunched as Save Lives: clean your hands in 2009 with the publication of the WHO hand hygiene guidelines and the unveiling of the ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’ concept.1 This framework lays out the Five Moments for Hand Hygiene during patient care and has been tested in many differing healthcare settings internationally.2 These moments include:
1 Before touching a patient.
2 Before a clean/aseptic procedure.
3 After body fluid exposure risk.
4 After touching a patient.
5 After touching patient surroundings.
In order to increase compliance with these Five Moments and improve hand hygiene across all healthcare settings, a multi modal approach to hand hygiene was recommended. Multi modal approaches have been proven to be most effective in promoting long-term, sustained change.3,4 The components of the WHO multi modal hand hygiene improvement strategy5 are designed to promote and sustain a culture of safe hand hygiene practice throughout the organisation in order to achieve real culture change. They are:
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