World Hand Hygiene Day – Catherine Harrison Blog
On Sunday 5th May, we’re joining in with World Hand Hygiene Day! To learn more we asked Catherine Harrison, Infection Prevention Specialist Nurse for Leeds GP Confederation about the importance of the day.
As Infection Prevention Specialist Nurse, my role is to work closely with all services and partners throughout the system to ensure that safe, effective care is provided to the people of Leeds and that preventative measures are in place to reduce the transmission of preventable healthcare associated infections. It’s important that all Confed colleagues follow hand hygiene regulations. By improving our hand hygiene, together we can help prevent future infections and lower our need for antibiotics, an essential component in the fight against anti-microbial resistance!
The aim of World Hand Hygiene Day is to continue to share the importance of Hand Hygiene in healthcare around the world. Being able to share this knowledge is vital as it helps to stop the spread of harmful germs in healthcare environments.
There are lots of things that we can do, specifically when working in general practice, to improve our hand hygiene, such as the importance of being ‘Bare Below the Elbows’ and following the 5 moments for hand hygiene.
West Yorkshire’s Health & Care Partnership have now launched their new ‘Gloves Off’ campaign ahead of World Hand Hygiene Day. The campaign encourages health and care workers in West Yorkshire to stop using single use non-sterile plastic gloves when carrying out certain activities for non-infectious patients. The focus instead is on more effective hand hygiene before and after these activities. The Gloves Off web page has more information about the campaign, plus a range of resources for you to download.
Together, we can accelerate action to prevent infections and antimicrobial resistance in health care and build a culture of safety and quality in which hand hygiene improvement is given high priority.
Catherine Harrison, Infection Prevention Specialist Nurse