Posts Tagged ‘hand hygiene’
Can patient and resident hand hygiene be part of the solution to preventing infections?
The importance of practising proper hand hygiene is widely considered to be the most effective means of preventing the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and reducing contamination of the environment within healthcare settings1-2. With hand hygiene being a simple, yet effective way of preventing the transmission of pathogens, much emphasis has been placed on the…
Read MoreMore Than Skin Deep: Improving patient hand hygiene
A study on improving patient hand hygiene in a District General Hospital in England showed a multimodal strategy, including the implementation of Clinell wipes, improved patient hand hygiene. Following on from our “More Than Skin Deep” collaboration with British Skin Foundation and ITN Productions Industry News, which premiered at the British Association of Dermatologists’ Annual…
Read MoreNew digital hand hygiene game launches
Innovative educational game, ‘Hand Wash Squad’, helps children learn the art of handwashing. Hand Wash Squad, an exciting new hand hygiene game, launches this month to help parents and teachers across the globe educate children about the importance of handwashing. The concept has been created by a team of entrepreneurs and industry experts, including skin…
Read MoreAssessing the risk of hospital transmission of COVID-19
As hospitals move past the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of hospital-transmission looms large. Elective services will reopen and patients who have not been exposed to COVID-19 as a result of the broadly successful lockdown will come into hospitals and risk exposure to patient (and staff) with COVID-19 infections. How big is this…
Read MoreHealthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) Conference Summary
It’s the second time I’ve had the pleasure to speak at Healthcare Infection Transmission Systems (HITS) conference. The conference launched in 2017 and since then, provides an excellent platform for industry and academia to exchange knowledge, ideas and expertise. As always, there was a lot of excellent presentations and thought- provoking debates. The main areas…
Read MoreCelebrating World Hand Hygiene Day
As we come towards 5th May, it’s time to celebrate global hand hygiene day! This year, the theme for the WHO’s campaign is ‘Clean care for all – it’s in your hands’. The WHO team in Geneva have published editorials in a range of journals (including one here in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology) outlining the details…
Read MoreThe impact of an environmental hygiene intervention in reducing the spread of viruses in an office building
Have you suspected your office colleague in giving you that cold? Well, this study suggests that sometimes, you might be right, and that a hygiene intervention including the use of hand sanitising wipes can help to reduce the changes of virus spread in an office setting. The study was performed in an office building in which around…
Read MoreLooking back to IPS 2018
It’s been a month or two since the 2018 Infection Prevention Society Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. So, we thought it would be a good time to look back and remind ourselves of some of the highlights from our point of view. You can access all of the IPS abstracts here. – Andreas Voss gave a fabulous…
Read MoreAntimicrobial-impregnated patient hand wipes are a goer
A lab-based study using healthy volunteers has demonstrated that antimicrobial-impregnated hand wipes can do as well – if not better – than soap and water for hand hygiene. These findings provide more support for the idea that hand wipes could be a useful innovation in improving patient hand hygiene. The study aimed to evaluate the use of…
Read MoreTime to wipe away C. difficile from patients’ hands?
A US study has found that around 15% of patients with C. difficile infection have C. difficile contaminated hands, and that removing these spores from patients’ hands is challenging. The study was performed in a 500-bed US hospital. Around 50 patients with C. difficile infection were enrolled in the study, and randomised to either hand hygiene using either alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR) or…
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