Stop cross infection
February 1st 2005 Hand hygiene is widely recognised as a vital factor in reducing the number of hospital-acquired infections. Yet staff are still failing to wash their hands. Several attempts have been made over the years to educate doctors and nurses about the risks involved if they fail to wash and dry their hands regularly. But hand hygiene is often a private matter and therefore difficult to enforce. Now SCA Tissue Europe has launched a move to help improve hand hygiene in UK hospitals and will soon extend the initiative into industry.
Tork Hygiene at Work combines staff training with a series of handwashing reminders and prompts. It also includes a tracking system to chart the success of the scheme. “Reportedly 5000 people in the UK are dying as a result of hospital-acquired infections each year,” says SCA Tissue Europe‘s Kelvin Hefford. “Hospital chiefs and infection control nurses are doing everything they can to curb the problem, but the stakes were recently raised with a new government directive demanding that rates of MRSA be cut by 50 per cent within three years.”
Hospital-acquired infections are costing the UK around £1billion a year. New antibiotics are being developed but experts fear MRSA will develop an immunity to these, leaving us with fewer defenses than ever. A much simpler measure is to improve hand hygiene in hospitals because poor hand hygiene is one of the most common causes of hospitalacquired infections.
Tork Hygiene at Work has been designed to get the message across using a series of training modules. “First we train our own staff about the importance of hand hygiene and how to equip a washroom to maximise hand hygiene,” said Kelvin.
“Our teams then go out into the field and train our distributors in the same way. Finally, these distributors arrange meetings on site where a washroom survey is carried out and an inventory is made of what facilities are needed. Our aim is to raise awareness of the types of activities that cause cross-contamination in hospitals and to help healthcare staff provide the best hand hygiene facilities possible.”
Secondary infections are rife in hospitals for several reasons. Many hospitals have insufficient or poorly equipped washrooms and staff who feel they are too busy to stop and wash their hands. Most people are ill which means their immune systems are impaired, and in today’s busy care institutions it is not uncommon for the same staff to handle bandages, dressings, incontinence pads and food. This can be lethal in an environment where patients already have cuts and sores or body openings in which catheters or tubes have been inserted. Bacteria can be transferred between staff and patients via the hands, clothing, bedclothes, surgical instruments, food or water.
“Tork Hygiene at Work provides some thoughtprovoking information about hand hygiene,” said Kelvin. “For example, bacteria equal in numbers to the population of Europe can be found beneath an average person’s wedding ring. Also, a door handle contaminated by a person who has not washed their hands will contaminate the hands of the next 14 people who use it.”
The programme comprises a Basic Hygiene at Work module plus two further modules. It is available in two versions: one for long-term care facilities and the other for acute hospitals. Healthcare 1 provides basic training and motivational tools while Healthcare 2 allows the results of the programme to be professionally measured.
The optional second module analyses hand towel and soap consumption before and after the scheme is implemented and uses questionnaires to assess staff and patient attitudes towards the programme. SCA evaluates the results and creates a report for the healthcare unit on the success of the scheme.
Tork Hygiene at Work will be rolled out in hospitals this year. A food industry version will be available soon.
“Good hand hygiene is vital for reducing infections everywhere, particularly in environments such as food preparation areas and offices,” said Kelvin. More articles from SCA Hygiene Products UK Ltd: | 
