While there is no single way to eliminate healthcare-associated infections, improving hand hygiene compliance can have a significantly positive impact. Eighty percent of infections are spread by dirty hands. In fact, washing hands is often the single best defense against illness.
Flushing Hospital Medical Center‘s (FHMC) journey to become a high-reliability organization has made prevention of hospital-acquired infections one of its priorities. To realize this goal, FHMC embarked on a campaign to improve hand hygiene, which began earlier this year and has resulted in some promising advancements.
The hand hygiene campaign used a multi-prong approach that involves increasing awareness, education and monitoring. Specific steps include placing alcohol-based hand sanitizers in easy-to-access locations, displaying posters that ask,” Have you washed your hands today,” education on the correlation between infectious rates and hand hygiene and active surveillance of employee adherence.
Administrators personally visited with staff on each unit to raise awareness for this important campaign. Hospital personnel were asked to take a pledge to actively engage in infection prevention through adherence to hand hygiene. Currently, the hospital has a 92% hand hygiene compliance rate.
Flushing Hospital will continue to make strides in infection prevention efforts and strive to sustain hand-hygiene practice improvements. The organization will continue to motivate employees to be supportive of and committed to proper infection control practices. Jamaica Hospital has also required its staff to take the Hand Hygiene Pledge and has taken steps to raise awareness of the importance of washing hands to prevent infections and the spread of germs.