What are health care-associated infections?
Sometimes patients get infections after they are admitted to hospital. These are called health care associated infections.
How will the public reporting of hand hygiene compliance affect compliance among health care professionals?
There are many factors that will improve hand hygiene compliance. Mandatory public reporting is one element. Certainly the increasing recent attention on the issue as well as the provincial government’s multifaceted hand hygiene program called Just Clean Your Hands are important to ensuring effective hand hygiene at the right times.
Why is hand hygiene so important?
Hand hygiene is an important practice for health care providers and has a significant impact on reducing the spread of infections in hospitals. Hand hygiene is a different way of thinking about safety and patient care and involves everyone in the hospital, including patients and health care providers.
Effective hand hygiene practices in hospitals play a key role in improving patient and provider safety, and in preventing the spread of health care-associated infections.
What is The Royal doing to improve hand hygiene?
We are placing more alcohol based hand rub (ABHR) in strategic locations within our facilities as well as educating all staff with the Just Clean Your Hands training module from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care. We are offering small portable ABHR for staff to carry to ensure they will be able to clean their hands at any given time, in any given place.
What can patients do to help improve their own safety?
Hand hygiene involves everyone in the hospital, including patients. Hand cleaning is one of the best ways you and your health care team can prevent the spread of many infections. Patients and their visitors should also practice good hand hygiene before and after entering patient rooms.
More patient-specific information is available at www.ontario.ca/patientsafety.