Hand hygiene
Introduction:
Hand hygiene is considered to be the primary responsibility of the people because it triggers several infected diseases. In this era, people are struggling because of COVID-19, and hand hygiene is also considered a significant factor in transferring the disease. In this way, hand hygiene should critically focus on the people. In this context, CDC makes a standard for hand hygiene that has to follow by the associated people. In this report, the current standards of CDC hand hygiene strategy are analyzed along with the modifications in the targeted areas. Meanwhile, the training of the employees and associated medical staff for hand hygiene strategy is also discussed in the report.
Current hand hygiene standards of CDC:
CDC made the hand hygiene standards by focusing on the associated factors that may become the reason for infected diseases. Firstly, the medical staff has to make a wash their hands while in contact with the patient. Sometimes, the medical staff analyzes the particular infected area of the patient, so there is also a need to wash the hand for contact with the same patient after analyzing the infected area (Larson, 2007). The medical staff also have to wash the hand after touching the medical machinery because the machinery must be clean. The medical staff has to wash their hands while touching any patient’s surroundings (Larson, 2007). The medical staff washes the hands after touching the contaminated areas or blood. Meanwhile, it is compulsory to wash the hand after the removal of gloves.
Recommendations for improvement:
The current hand hygiene strategy for CDC is mainly related to medical staff and highlights some general activities related to the public. In this way, most of the associated people follow the policy, but some ignore and don’t take it seriously (Fox, 2015). There are two significant challenges for the CDC, including implementing the policies and making a general policy for the overall people rather than mainly focusing on the medical staff. For instance, the medical staff is responsible for washing the hands during contact with the patient. Ultimately, it is the staff’s responsibility to wash their hands because it may transfer the diseases to the medical staff. Nevertheless, the medical staff must be conscious about washing the hands, but the associated people, such as patients, should also follow the hand hygiene strategy (Fox, 2015). In this way, the medical staff gets the associated knowledge through literature even during the educational career, but there is a need to be aware of hand hygiene. In this context, the medical department has placed the related literature in the hospitals in posters (Garus-Pakowska, 2013). Meanwhile, there is also a need to modify the policy so that the medical department must follow the hand hygiene strategy rather than ignore them.
Modifications in the policy:
The CDC policy is made for general medical staff, but the hand hygiene policy must address several medical-associated departments. Firstly, there is a need to make a comprehensive hand hygiene policy for the veterinary department because of infections in animals. CDC generally describes the policy for hand hygiene, but contact with animals requires specific techniques for washing the hands. Meanwhile, there is also a need to focus on the policy for the educational department (Hugonnet, 2000). It is found that 99% of the people become part of educational institutions in their lives in students and teachers. In this way, the CDC has to focus on the hand hygiene policy for education because it is the way to aware more people because of the hand hygiene strategy. There is also a need to focus on the quality of products that are used for washing hands. It is observed that the CDC is only focusing on the hand hygiene strategy rather than focusing on the particular products (Hugonnet, 2000). It is observed that the products for washing the hands are considered to be the central part of hand hygiene strategy. In this way, it must be part of the hand hygiene strategy. There is also a need to modify the difference between the hand hygiene strategy of ordinary people and infected people because the infected people have to be more conscious of hand hygiene. The modifications in the policy are beneficial to produce positive consequences of hand hygiene strategy.
Training of staff for hand hygiene:
CDC makes the policy for hand hygiene, but there is a need to make a plan for training staff and associated people to follow the hand hygiene strategy. Firstly, the hand hygiene strategy should be part of the medical course. In this way, it becomes easy for the medical department to provide theoretical knowledge for the importance of hand hygiene (Sax, 2009). Meanwhile, the theoretical knowledge for the implementation of hand hygiene should also be part of the course material. The next step is the practical knowledge of hand hygiene so that the medical students can make a grip on the hand hygiene process. In this way, the medical staff is trained to follow the hand hygiene strategy (Huis, 2012). Meanwhile, there is a need to supervise the protocol adopted by the medical department and continuously pointed out the hand hygiene process. In this way, the hand hygiene process becomes an essential part of the medical staff. There is also a need to arrange the seminars and training sessions for the medical staff, so it becomes easy to know the staff about hand hygiene. There is also a need to make a strong relationship between the nurses and staff. The nurses are primarily in contact with the patients, so they must focus on hand hygiene (Huis, 2012). The staff must be focused on the activities of nurses for the sake of the hand hygiene process. There is a need to make a schedule and reminders for the hand hygiene process. The nurses and staff have to wash their hands while making contact with the patients, but they wash their hands after a particular time.
Conclusion:
It is concluded that the hand hygiene standards of the CDC have already produced positive consequences for the medical department. Meanwhile, some modifications are also required to improve the CDC hand hygiene mentioned in the report. Still, the problem is that the medical staff is not following the framework for hand hygiene that is considered to be a big challenge for the medical department. It is the medical staff’s responsibility to follow the hand hygiene standards because these are compulsory for overcoming infected diseases. Meanwhile, the CDC also has to make changes in the policy according to the provided recommendations.
References:
Fox, C., Wavra, T., Drake, D. A., Mulligan, D., Bennett, Y. P., Nelson, C., … & Bader, M. K. (2015). Use of a patient hand hygiene protocol to reduce hospital-acquired infections and improve nurses’ hand washing. American Journal of Critical Care, 24(3), 216-224.
Garus-Pakowska, A., Sobala, W., & Szatko, F. (2013). Observance of hand washing procedures performed by the medical personnel before patient contact. Part I. International journal of occupational medicine and environmental health, 26(1), 113-121.
Hugonnet, S., & Pittet, D. (2000). Hand hygiene—beliefs or science?. Clinical microbiology and infection, 6(7), 348-354.
Huis, A., van Achterberg, T., de Bruin, M., Grol, R., Schoonhoven, L., & Hulscher, M. (2012). A systematic review of hand hygiene improvement strategies: a behavioural approach. Implementation Science, 7(1), 1-14.
Larson, E. L., Quiros, D., & Lin, S. X. (2007). Dissemination of the CDC’s Hand Hygiene Guideline and impact on infection rates. American journal of infection control, 35(10), 666-675.
Sax, H., Allegranzi, B., Chraïti, M. N., Boyce, J., Larson, E., & Pittet, D. (2009). The World Health Organization hand hygiene observation method. American journal of infection control, 37(10), 827-834.