28/01/10

The cleanyourhands programme has now been running at the Trust for six years, but thought each initiative has a different slant, the aim to protect patients by ensuring staff and visitors clean their hands effectively has remained the same.

Over the last year, the Trust’s cleanyourhands programme has focused on the ‘5 moments for hand hygiene’.

Staff were issued with cards detailing when to wash and gel their hands specifying that this should be before and after patient contact, before an asceptic task, after exposure to bodily fluids and after contact with the patient’s environment.

The programme was aimed at emphasising that this applies to all staff who come into contact with patients or their immediate environment. The Trust has also advised that hands should be decontaminated on entry and exit from the wards/clinical areas.

This year we recruited 60 new champions across the Trust. There were a number of workshops held to raise awareness and to advise all the Clean your hands champions of their roles and responsibilities.

Director of Nursing Maggie Arnold:

“The safety of our patients is an absolute priority. These figures are an excellent reflection of the hard work our staff has put in, but we must not be complacent.

“Hand hygiene is the cornerstone of infection control and the simplest and most cost effective means of reducing Health care associated infections.

“The cleanyourhands campaign is proving an effective, integral part of our multi-faceted approach to reducing infection at the Trust.

“The key to this is the hard work of the infection control team and the excellent work of our dedicated hand hygiene champions who help to keep our staff motivated and focussed.”