MOVING ANNOUNCEMENT
We have moved our hand hygiene blog to another location. Our new site will give the chance to comment our posts and search older posts easier. We hope that these changes will bring us closer.
APIC Implementation Guides – NEW! Guide to Hand Hygiene Programs for Infection Prevention (2015)
2015.08.17.
About APIC The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) is the leading professional association for infection preventionists (IPs) with more than 15,000 members. Their mission is to create a safer world through the prevention of infection. This is achieved by the provision of better care to promote better health at a lower cost. Most APIC members are nurses, physicians, public health professionals, epidemiologists, microbiologists, or medical technologists who: Collect, analyze, and interpret health data in order to track infection trends, plan appropriate interventions, measure success, and report relevant data to public health agencies. Establish scientifically based infection prevention… Read more
Infection Report – The Breakdown of Outbreaks
These last couple months it seems like there’s a new case of something unexpected popping up. These are some of the issues healthcare workers across the globe have been treating patients for, but, even if you’re not dealing with these headline infections, remember to wash your hands. Ebola: The CDC Director Thomas Frieden visited Sierra Leone in an effort to try to help get the number of Ebola cases to zero, and two new cases emerged while he was there. The virus killed one man last week, even though the district he was in didn’t have any Ebola cases for five… Read more
Wash your hands – and save the world from superbugs (by Val Curtis)
2015.08.11.
We’re always being told that we should wash our hands, but many of us still find reasons to skip this basic everyday habit; maybe the water is too cold, or too hot, the soap doesn’t smell nice or we’re just in too much of a hurry. But now the results of a huge new study, just published in the Lancet, mean that we no longer have any excuses. This simple everyday practice could be vital, not just for our own and our family’s health, but for that of the country and even all of our species. Researchers at the University… Read more
Visiting A Hospital? Clean Your Hands!
2015.07.28.
When you walk into a hospital or healthcare facility, you can’t help but notice how the environment has changed over the years. In the last decade, the industry responsible for our health has taken great strides to improve hygiene. Hand sanitizer stations are everywhere, certain rooms are marked with a variety of notices, and signs regarding handwashing are in every public bathroom. This is all part of infection prevention and control, or IPC. When it was first introduced over 60 years ago, the goal was to prevent the sudden occurrence of infections turning up in otherwise healthy patients. Back then,… Read more
Why hand hygiene still needs a clean-up
2015.07.22.
At a time when many believe the issue of hand hygiene has been fixed, much work remains to be done to embed robust systems in UK healthcare, says Jennifer Trueland Read the case studies related to this article here As the senior nurse in the infection prevention and control team at Salisbury Foundation Trust, Fiona McCarthy is a regular at trust board meetings. It’s important, she says, that board members are aware of their responsibilities towards infection prevention, and also that they are kept up to date with any issues. “There are always a lot of questions – which means… Read more
2015.07.17.
Dear Blog Readers, Thank you for reading our blog and we hope you find it useful. We have recieved a kind e-mail from Erin. She shared the following link with us, it could be useful for Moms: http://www.portapotty.net/handwashing/ We appreciate your feedbacks! Kind regards, Hand in Scan Team
WHO Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Global Survey for 2015
2015.07.09.
Complete the Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework Global Survey before 10 September 2015 All health-care facilities registered for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands have received a special invite by WHO to participate in this global survey and to submit their Hand Hygiene Self-Assessment Framework results. Once completed, the results of the online survey will be issued in October 2015, for the 10th anniversary of the Clean Care is Safer Care programme (facilities’ identity will remain anonymous in the results). If your facility is not registered for SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands, register here now and you can still be invited to… Read more
Superbugs: Health Crisis of this Generation
2015.06.29.
Decades of inaction to curb the overuse of life-saving antibiotics by physicians, dentists, patients, and farmers has created hard-to-treat “superbugs” that are spreading and growing stronger, with dire consequences, according to Consumer Reports, the world’s largest and most trusted nonprofit consumer organization. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that the unrestrained use of antibiotics sickens at least 2.25 million Americans each year and kills another 37,000 people. “The Rise of Superbugs” is featured on ConsumerReports.org/superbugs and in the August issue ofConsumer Reports magazine and is the first report in a three-part investigative series focused on America’s antibiotic crisis. This… Read more