Clean Hands Count to Keep Patients Safe from Healthcare Associated Infections

Janet Glowicz, PhD, RN, Infection Preventionist
CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion

On any given day, about one in 31 hospital patients has at least one healthcare-associated infection. Healthcare providers who clean their hands often, provide clean care for their patients and help prevent the spread of germs that can lead to serious infections. This World Hand Hygiene Day, remember: clean care for all – it’s in your hands.

Clean hands count:  When you’re healthy, you have the power to make sure your hands are clean. When you’re ill, you count on everyone who is caring for you to clean their hands, and frequently. Consider nursing technicians who care for 10 or more patients in a 12-hour shift. They should clean their hands every time they enter and exit a patient room. They also have to make sure their hands are clean before they feed someone, after they handle dirty materials, and any other time they move between “clean” and “dirty” tasks—maybe as many as 100 times in a shift. That’s a lot of hand hygiene.

Clean hands protect:  Healthcare workers’ hands are continually exposed to bacteria, which can be transferred from patient to surface to patient. Researchers studying hand contamination and Acinetobacter, a bacteria that can cause healthcare-associated infections, found that healthcare personnel were likely to have the bacteria on their hands after activities as brief as touching a bed rail. Bacteria aren’t visible, but busy healthcare providers might forget that clean-looking hands can be contaminated with germs that can cause infections. The simple act of rubbing alcohol-based hand sanitizer into the hands for around 20 seconds rapidly kills many organisms and reduces the threat for the next patient the healthcare worker touches.

Clean hands save lives:  Researchers in a facility in North Carolina that routinely scores high in hand hygiene adherence, weren’t satisfied when personnel performed hand hygiene appropriately more than 80% of the time. They aimed higher. By successfully engaging all healthcare personnel, they raised the rate to 95%.  This saved the facility a lot of money, and even more importantly, the prevention of dangerous infections.

Clean hands care:  CDC has long recognized the lifesaving benefits of hand hygiene in healthcare settings. It’s a critically important infection prevention measure and applies to every type of patient, in every healthcare setting. You can help your healthcare providers remember to clean their hands. You should see them cleaning their hands before they enter the room to take care of you, and often during care, if you don’t see them cleaning their hands, speak up! They should clean their hands again when they leave the room. Your healthcare provider knows how important clean hands are. Next time you see them cleaning their hands, tell them how much you appreciate clean hands. And don’t forget to clean your hands, too!

Janet Glowicz, PhD, RN is an infection preventionist with the Hospital Infection Prevention Team in the Prevention and Response Branch of CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. Janet has directed infection prevention programs in the community setting, community-based hospitals, and an academic medical center. She currently serves as the subject matter expert for hand hygiene in healthcare settings.