Reducing Patient Infections

Healthcare Worker Hand-hygiene

Oct 29, 2006 Judy Arbique

An article in our local paper last Saturday reported that one in nine patients in Canadian hospitals gets an infection before leaving hospital.

This past week has been Canadian patient safety week. According to the head of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, one in nine patients acquires an infection while in the hospital, and he suggested that regular hand-washing could reduce the incidence of these infections by half. Canada is just one of many countries struggling with the problem of health-care related infections. Compared to many countries, Canadian hospitals may appear to be some of the safest!

In order to raise awareness globally of the impact of health care-associated infections on patient safety and promoting preventive strategies The World Health Organization has instituted The World Health Alliance for Patient Safety program, and is encouraging health-care institutions around the world to accept the challenge to reduce health-care infections. Canada is the 30th country to sign the WHO's pledge to reduce health-care acquired infections.

The 5 components of the patient safety program are:

• blood safety,
• injection and immunization safety,
• safe clinical procedures,
• safe water and sanitation in health care,
• hand hygiene.

In addition to accepting the WHO patient safety challenge, The Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) funded by the federal government was established in December 2003 . The mandate of the Institute is to promote innovative solutions and to facilitate collaboration among governments and stakeholders to enhance patient safety. The Institute seeks to provide leadership in patient safety improvement. One of the initiatives of the CPSI is Canadian Patient Safety week (CPSW) – in its second year.

The focus of this year’s campaign was hand-hygiene, and the CPSW website provides a number of ideas for improving hand-hygiene compliance. One of the ideas being adopted by many healthcare institutions is the “Ask Me?” campaign, which encourages patients to ask their healthcare providers questions; one of which is, “Did you wash your hands?” The purpose of the campaign is to improve awareness of the importance of good hand-hygiene among patients and healthcare workers, and to ensure proper and consistent hand-washing. Watch for “Ask Me?” buttons on healthcare workers in your hospitals, and even if you don’t see these buttons, ask anyway!

The copyright of the article Reducing Patient Infections in Microbiology is owned by Judy Arbique. Permission to republish Reducing Patient Infections in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Its in your hands