Infection Prevention and Control for Clinical Practice

Infection Prevention and
Control for Clinical Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Facts and Statistics...........................................................................................................................1
Methods of research.........................................................................................................................3
Findings...........................................................................................................................................5
Caregivers wash their hands........................................................................................................5
Number of times people actually wash their hands in a health care set up.................................5
Number of infected patients arrived at the duration of 12 hours of observation.........................6
Effectiveness in the method of washing hands............................................................................6
Caregivers washing their hands after handling infected patient..................................................6
Analysis...........................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11
APPENDIX....................................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Hand hygiene practice is a vital activity that must be performed by all, especially by the care
givers who directly deals with handling patients in a health care set up. The report discusses
regarding impact on health of an individual if he / she is not involved in washing hands after
coming in contact with some infected set up. It also focuses upon various scenarios in which
hand hygiene is mandatorily be adopted. An observational investigation will be discussed which
has been performed in department of medicine discussing various practices that are generally
adopted by care giving staff members. The report is then responsible for finding out various
practices that can he recommended to the health care set up for effective hand hygiene practices.
Facts and Statistics
Infection control practices help in maintaining clean and safe environment for people. It
plays an important role in reducing the risk of potential spread of a particular disease from one
individual to other. There are various infection control practices that are generally adopted by
individuals. These are cleaning and disinfection, respiratory hygiene, safe injection practices,
proper arrangement of waste disposal, etc. One of the most important practices that can be
adopted by the individual at their home is hand hygiene practices (Davey and et.al., 2013).
Observers have stated that a solid hand hygiene programme backed with documented
evidences can help in reducing the transmission of microorganism from one individual to other.
It also reduces the risk of healthcare worker colonisation. It also assists in preventing food
poisoning, flu and other health care related infections that can be easily transferred from one
individual to other.
The research conducted by government of UK stated that the main purpose of initiated
hand washing is to remove dirt, bacteria and virus from hands so that it can be stopped from
transferring to environment which can lead the individual to illness. Hence, an individual must
be indulged in washing hands particularly in following scenarios:
 After using toilet
 After handling raw food like meat, chicken and vegetables
 Before eating or handling ready to eat food
 After handling any type of animal or pets (Shinde and Mohite, 2014)
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Despite of knowing the importance of hand hygiene, there are a large percentage of British
individuals, who do not follow this practice. 95 out of every 100 individuals surveyed stated that
they wash their hands after using toilet. But the reality is, only 65 of them perform this action.
The statistics revealed that 8 out of 10 infections are commonly spread by touch. Passing bacteria
and other infectious disease is entirely avoidable if an individual is involved in washing hands
after every specific interval. Infection Prevention Society (IPS) have suggested that if proper
infection control techniques can be taught to children, then their absenteeism due to infection
will be reduced by 20% (Yawson and Hesse, 2013). Further, respiratory infections can also be
reduced by approximately 17% with adoption of good hand hygiene practices.
Research has been able to state that a hospital tends to contain 20,000 germs every square
inch. These germs can be passed in the form of phones, coffee machines or any other thing that
can come in contact with the washroom. By not washing hands, one is promoting its spread and
divides it multiple times (Mahfouz, El Gamal and Al-Azraqi, 2013). Despite of knowing the
importance of washing hands, there are 62% and 40% of women who actually don’t wash hands
after using the toilet.
80% of the communicable diseases are actually spread by touch which means that it can
easily be prevented by application of proper hand washing techniques. Touching food with
contaminated hands can lead to various food borne infections, such as, E. coli, Salmonella and
diarrheal infection. Diarrhoea is the second prominent cause of childhood death, which can be
reduced by 40%, simply by practices effective hand washing techniques (Al-Tawfiq and et.al.,
2013).
Adequate significance is present for washing hands in patient care. Decontamination of
hands can help in reducing the incidence of perpetual fever and maternal mortality as well.
Since, it is the least expensive practice adopted by the health care workers, its adoption can
reduce the degree of infections that may be prevailing in the hospital environment. The study
revealed that health care workers actually clean their hands only half of times they actually
should. Hence, it has become major contribution to health care associated infections which affect
1 out of 25 patients visited or admitted to the hospital every day.
Already sick people tend to face weak immune system which can easily get attracted to the
infections, revolving in the air of hospital. It becomes important to control prevalence of infected
microorganisms to reduce infection. Hand hygiene is not the only method to control health care
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