How can Hand Hygiene Benefit the Healthcare Setting?

Running head: HOW CAN HAND HYGIENE BENEFIT THE HEALTHCARE
SETTING
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How can Hand Hygiene Benefit the Healthcare Setting?
Jessica Nichols
Grand Canyon University

HOW CAN HAND HYGIENE BENEFIT THE HEALTHCARE SETTING 2
How can Hand Hygiene benefit the Healthcare Setting?
Hand hygiene is one of the simplest but most effective ways to prevent bacteria, virus or
germs from spreading. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), states that
practicing good hygiene prevents infections such as, antibiotic resistant infection.
Approximately, less than half of healthcare workers perform hand hygiene than they are required
to do (CDC, 2019). Often, when learning about hand hygiene and when to wash or sanitize,
individuals are told to always clean hands when in direct contact with body fluids or other
contaminants. Alcohol based sanitizers have shown to eliminate most of the germs or bacteria
that can weaken one’s immune system. Also, sanitizers can also cause dryness and eventually
breaking the skin, exposing that individual to both good and bad germs which are harmful for the
individual. It’s important to remember that when sanitizing and washing, one mustto rotate
between the two in order to avoid severe dryness to hands and every so often to try to use a
moisturizer. One in thirty-one hospital have reported a patient having a hospital-acquired
infection due to poor hand hygiene (CDC, 2019). Nurses and healthcare providers have saved
numerous lives from performing this task while treating or caring for patients.
Furthermore, the purpose of this appraisal is to determine the impact that good hand
hygiene has on the healthcare setting and determine how patients can benefit from this action.
It’s also important that healthcare organizationsinfection control implements infection control
practices such as an on the job training, ensuring that all the staff are competent with hand
washing. Sometimes, people believe that washing with soap and water is enough, however
there’s a required time for hand washing and specific areas of the hand should be cleansed while
doing so. Healthcare workers should also try to keep their nails trimmed and avoid artificial
nails, due to bacteria finding their way under the nails leading to a higher microbial

HOW CAN HAND HYGIENE BENEFIT THE HEALTHCARE SETTING 3
concentration. The two articles that I’ve selected explains how hand washing can change the
outcome of patient care by reducing microbial contamination and increasinges the patient’ir
chances of survivalving.
How do these two articles support the nurse practice issue you chose?
In addition, the first article I’ll summarize is explaining the effects of proper hand
hygiene during hemodialysis services. Infections involving the blood stream can cause more
harm than good for dialysis patients. As the CDC mentioned, approximately 75,000 patients
receiveing hemodialysis through a central line. These patients also have a high-risk for infection,
because the central line places them at a greater risk, 37000 central line-associated blood stream
infections have occurred in the United States with patients on hemodialysis in the year 2008
(CDC, 2017). Patients undergoing dialysis are at a higher for multi-drug-resistant
microorganisms, it’s important to remember that during the insertion of a central line the
individual performing this task should remember that this procedure requires sterile technique to
lower the risk for exposure to bacteria. During this procedure blood is removed from the
patient’s body then filtered or cleaned by the dialysis machine, then returned into the individual’s
body. Infection is the second leading cause of death for patients suffering from End-Stage
Kidney Disease (ESKD) (Silva et al., 2018). The main objective of this research is to see how
well the nursing team can comply with safe hand hygiene practice and latex glove usage when
conducting hemodialysis in Sao Paulo State, Brazil (Silva et al., 2018).
Meanwhile, in South Sudan there was a study conducted to determine the knowledge of
hand washing among healthcare providers working at Juba Teaching Hospital (JTH) and
determine if there are any associations with demographics, professionals and clinical associated
factors. Also, nosocomial infections have shown to increase the mortality rate, but adhering to