There are many collegesand universities where a student can study nursing, however; no matter whereyou go, the first thing you will learn is: how cleanse your hands.
Hand hygienecan seem quite simple to the untrained eye, but not to the healthcare worker.Proper hand hygiene is the number one way to prevent the spread of infection.Most pathogenic microbes are spread through contaminated hands, approximately 2million patients each year obtain a hospital acquired infection (HAI) fromheath care workers hands (Taylor, Lillis, Lynn, 2015).Summarizethe article: What was the purpose of the research? What did the researches do?What were the results? In the research articleElectronic Monitoring of Individual Healthcare Workers’ Hand Hygiene Event Rateby Muller and Levchenko, the authors tested the idea that electronicallymonitoring heath care workers movements in relation to hand hygiene wouldimprove the amount of hand hygiene preformed in a twelve hour shift. Thepurpose of this article was to test a theory that observing health care workerselectronically and providing real- time feedback would improve the number ofhand hygiene events and compliance of the individual health care worker (Mullerand Levchenko, 2014). Usinga device called an Electronic Hand Hygiene Monitoring System (EMS) the authorshad volunteer nurses participate in this experiment of observing hand hygiene.
Theresearches increased the number of alcohol based hand rubs outside and inside often patient’s rooms and monitored the number of times the sanitizer was usedfrom ten out of twenty-five nurses on the unit, per twelve hour shift (handsoap was not included). The authors hypothesized that monitoring the healthcare workers usage of alcohol based hand rubs and providing in person regularfeedback would increase hand hygiene events (Muller and Levchenko, 2014). Over a twelve week course, the researchers analyzed theresults and found that although, the median number of times a health careworker preformed hand hygiene increased initially; each workers hand hygieneevents remained consistent throughout the experiment with no improvement inquality of hand hygiene performance or compliance (Mullerand Levchenko, 2014).
Describehow the findings in this article can influence your nursing care of patients. Sometimes monotonous tasks such as proper hand hygienecan be overlooked, but it is one of the most important actions nurses can do toensure the safety of our patients. Breaking the chain of infection through handhygiene can decrease HAI’s significantly. Approaching my first clinical andwith some healthcare experience already behind me, it is very easy to getcaught up in a task and forget to wash your hands or use an alcohol based handrub and go directly to the next patient or contaminate commonly used items.According to the findings in this article, being electronically monitored didnot increase the number of times hand hygiene occurred, however; health careworkers knowledge that they were being tracked did increase hand hygiene eventsper hour from each individuals baseline data. Encouraging myself and my peersto monitor our hand hygiene and working as a team will better protect ourpatients and solidify a good foundation and routine of hand hygiene while weare still learning so we can carry these skills with us wherever we go.
Asyou think about the paper, what other research could be done?Additionalresearch that could be done in consideration of this article would be to notonly document the use of alcohol-based hand rubs, but also hand washing withsoap and water which was not included in this study. According to the article, theauthors considered the use of verbal tones upon entering and leaving patientsrooms to que health care workers to perform hand hygiene (Muller and Levchenko,2014). Verbal reminders or even a positive tone could remind the health careworker that it is time to perform the appropriate hand hygiene. Scanning patientsand their medications has significantly reduced medication errors in thehospital setting; perhaps scanning the health care workers badge at handsanitizer pumps and at sinks would allow for accurate data to be obtained onthe amount of hand washing performed.
From this data, the hospital could keeptrack of nurses who may need to be retrained on appropriate hand hygienetechniques, ultimately increasing the hand hygiene of the nursing staff andreducing the risk of HAIs.
