Training healthcare workers on hand hygiene has become a critical part of the provision of quality care, and rightly so. The “Clean Care is Safe Care” Campaign emphasizes the significance of having clean hands in the healthcare facility (Tartari et al., 2019). The increased awareness comes as a result of the fact that most stakeholders in the healthcare system have realized that most healthcare acquitted infections are preventable. Clean hands play the most significant role in reducing and eliminating healthcare-acquired infections since most of them are transferred from one point or patient to another through hands. This is why training becomes a central pillar in effectively eliminating healthcare-acquired infections. One of the considerations is the development of timelines for the retraining of healthcare practitioners. Just like healthcare professionals continually refresh their skills with new knowledge, so should hand hygiene training. Healthcare administrators should develop programs that periodically help in replenishing hand hygiene skills. Healthcare facilities have a duty to provide quality care, and part of this is ensuring that the caregivers do not transmit hospital-acquired infections during examination and treatment.
The mode of training and monitoring can help in creating a clean hand hygiene culture among healthcare practitioners. Integrating multiple training modes can create a more effective outcome as opposed to a single approach. For instance, the use of online training coupled with face-to-face training can supplement the program. Some facilities may have limited resources to carry out a lot of face-to-face hand hygiene sessions; they can be helped through the adoption of online training provisions. The fact that the programs are integrated with face-to-face means that healthcare practitioners will get the chance to practice and observe other hygiene specialists as they demonstrate quality hand-cleaning standards (Mathur, 2011). This should be followed by a mentorship and shadowing program that aims at ensuring that a culture of clean hands is adopted and appreciated by everyone. The mentorship program will see the use of trainers training other trainers in what can be effective in ensuring that everyone is part of the program: this is a significant factor since one unhygienic practitioner may affect a lot of vulnerable patients. Similarly, the shadowing exercise will help the junior staff learn how hand hygiene should be practised. Research shows that healthcare practitioners should ideally wash their hands more than they currently do. Thus, the normalization of increased cleaning frequency will help spread a culture of proper hygiene among hospital staff.
Measuring hand hygiene practices among hospital staff can be done as an indicator of the progress and what can be improved. One of the indicators will be monitoring patients who report hospital-acquired infections among those admitted or treated at the facility (Tartari et al., 2019). The records will help in measuring to determine if the curve in the number of reported healthcare-acquired infections is declining or not. If the rate of decline is not as expected, more training can be adopted to help in keeping all staff prioritizing clean hands. Another measurement criterion will utilize a daily short questionnaire that will request the staff to indicate the number of times they used an alcohol-based hand sanitizer and the number of patients they handled: this will show the ratio of cleaning to the number of patients served. The questionnaire not only serves to provide more insight into the frequency of hand cleaning but also reminds these workers of the need to always keep their hands clean.
References
Tartari, E., Fankhauser, C., Masson-Roy, S., Márquez-Villarreal, H., Fernández Moreno, I., Rodriguez Navas, M. L., … & Pittet, D. (2019). Train-the-Trainers in hand hygiene: a standardized approach to guide education in infection prevention and control. Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control, 8(1), 1-11.
Mathur, P. (2011). Hand hygiene: back to the basics of infection control. The Indian journal of medical research, 134(5), 611.
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