Hand Hygiene Compliance

Hospitals are to collect at least 200 observations for every 100 in patient beds.

To ensure statistically valid data for smaller hospitals, or hospitals with fewer in-patient beds a minimum of 50 observed opportunities for hand hygiene will need to be collected.

The goal of public reporting hand hygiene compliance is to achieve an overall assessment of whether compliance rates are improving. It is normal for rates to vary from hospital to hospital.

Ontario hospitals are posting their hand hygiene compliance rates as percentages for time periods identified by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, using the following formula:

These percentages also reflect:

(i) Hand hygiene before initial patient/patient environment contact by combined health care provider type (e.g., nurses, allied health professionals, physicians, etc.)

(ii) Hand hygiene after patient/patient environment contact by combined health care provider type (e.g., nurses, allied health professionals, physicians, etc.)

What are health care-associated infections?

Sometimes when patients are admitted to the hospital, they can get infections. These are called health care-associated infections./p>

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.

STEGH has implemented the ‘Just Clean Your Hands’ hand hygiene program. We audit our compliance with this program and share the results with staff so that we can identify any areas of improvement. STEGH audits our practices for isolation precautions and environmental cleaning to identify any areas for improvement. STEGH ensures patient equipment is dedicated to an isolation room or if needed to be removed is cleaned in accordance to best practice to prevent spread.

STEGH has facilitated hand hygiene and infection prevention through the use of patient and staff education at orientation, staff bi-annual education sessions and individual learning through the implementation of the MOHLTC IPAC Core Competencies. The core competencies education consist of three modules (Hand Hygiene, Routine Practice and Chain of Transmission) that focus on providing consistent information that focuses on the transmission, prevention, and control of organisms. These modules help to ensure our practices align with the evidence based best practices and promote safe patient care.

STEGH is very pleased to introduce new hand hygiene stations throughout the organization that emphasize how important hand hygiene will help prevent infections and keep our patients, visitors and staff safe.

‘Clean Hands Saves Lives’ posters are posted throughout the hospital as part of the second phase of OHA Patient Safety Campaign introducing the role of the patient and family in preventing infections.