HAND HYGIENE

Hand Hygiene

Hand Hygiene

Task A: Effective Strategies for Improvement of Hand Washing Practices in an Acute Clinical Area of Nursing Practice

For the spread of an infection, a source of the infectious agent is a must which can be healthcare staff or patient etc. from which spread of micro- organisms take place. According to Pittet et. al. (2006), the staff of a hospital, most commonly, acts as the mode of source of infection and transmits infection from one patient to another or from the environment to the ill- beings. The only most efficient behavior that controls infection transmission is hand hygiene that prevents the spread of infectivity (Larson, 1999).

Nonetheless, at the national (Creedon, 2005) and global (Widmer et al, 2007) level, this effortless behavior stays intransigently complicated to ascend to acceptable extents.

Numerous aspects come out to have an effect on compliance of healthcare workers with hand-hygiene guidelines. Discernments of, and stimulus for, conformity with guidance diverges among professions. As compared to doctors, nurses have a comparatively higher compliance rate (Eckmanns et al, 2006; Berhe et al, 2005). HCAs is identified by Randle et al (2006) having a greater rate of compliance with hand-hygiene. In comparison with their peers, doctors distinguish their compliance with infection-control measures to be better (Berhe et al, 2005). Contingent upon the sort of work activity, compliance also varies. It was noted by Pittet et al (1999) that before high-risk procedures, non-compliance was higher while it was observed by Pittet (2004) and Jenner et al (2006) that with hand hygiene full compliance was poor, when a high risk of cross-infection was caused by care activity.

While caring for patients with infection of MRSA, similar findings were also identified by Jenner et al (2006). In general wards, due to the high workload, compliance is higher than ICUs (Pittet, 2004). In addition, within the same institution, hand-hygiene behavior of staff comes out to vary drastically among different wards, which proposes that the influences of both individual and institutional put an essential contribution (Pittet et al, 1999).

Hand-hygiene Behavior

Looking into guidelines for compliance with hand-hygiene entails an apprehension that how such behavior can be motivate. For instance, healthcare staff has, in general, awareness of suggestions concerning hand hygiene; however, hand-hygiene behaviour is not itself motivated by knowledge and education (Creedon, 2005). There is difference among observed and self-reported rates of compliance with hand hygiene (Jenner et al, 2006). O'Boyle et al.(2001) has indicted that even having the intention to act upon hygiene, staff may be ignorant of their meager compliance.

The behavior of hand hygiene ensues from a multifaceted interface of numerous factors and behavior has not, as yet, reliably predicted by any single behavioral theory. Individual practitioners have been targeted by most interventions and been unproductive. Instances of theories utilized to emphasize interventions consist of: PRECEDE (Predisposing, Reinforcing, Enabling, Constructs in Educational Diagnosis and Evaluation health education model); role modeling (Lankford et al, 2003) and theory of planned behavior (Clayton and Griffith, 2008). In raising compliance, not any of these interpersonal or intrapersonal theories ...