HANDS are the largest transmitters of pathogens in the health-care setting making hand hygiene the most important modifiable risk factor to a successful infection control plan. In the ICU, nursing staff has an average of 20 hand hygiene opportunities per patient care hour.
As part of The Joint Commissions Hospital Accreditation Program, the National Patient Safety Goals require compliance with either the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hand hygiene guidelines or the current World Health Organization (WHO) hand hygiene guidelines.
The CDC, WHO and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) call for point-of-care portable body-attached hand hygiene dispensers to comply with Your 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene. These are the points in a time-space framework and moments when hand hygiene is required to effectively interrupt microbial transmission during the care sequence within the Patient Zone.
The Patient Zone includes the intact skin of the patient and all inanimate surfaces that are touched by or in direct physical contact with that patient such as bedrails, bedside table, bed linen, infusion tubing and other medical equipment. It further contains surfaces frequently touched by healthcare workers (HCWs) while caring for the patient such as monitors, knobs, and buttons, and other ‘high frequency’ touch surfaces.
Download the 5 moments poster.
