Hand Hygiene in a Healthcare System, Research Proposal Example

Making a Change in Hand Hygiene Health Care System

Change, a fundamental component to persistent quality improvement, involves introducing and measuring the impact of different variables. Recognizing a system for change to encourage the delivery of protected and quality care is important for developing numerous tools and improvement strategies (World Health Organization, 2009). Hand Hygiene, which plays an important role in minimizing hospital associated infections, is a fundamental component of infection control programme. Usually, considered to be synonymous to hand washing, presence of safe hands enable in preventing the transmission of pathogens, besides fulfilling enhanced standards of safety with relation to cross-infection prevention (Tran, 2009). However, numerous health care workers usually fail in washing their hands and the compliance in such scenarios rarely crosses to 40%. The change of hand washing to rubbing with water-less, alcohol-dependent rub-in cleanser (usually followed in different European countries) can help in decreasing the side-effects. Use of this pattern may enable in exercising the benefits related to the dryness of the skin (Messina et al., 2008). As every system is perfectly developed to obtain the results, implementing the change necessitates the deliberate need of different techniques, personnel, interventions and guidelines (Rhinehart and Friedman, 2008). Implementing this change in Hand Hygiene in response to the risks recognised through a focus on adverse events, is a challenging task for numerous health care professionals. This project makes an effort in evaluating the guidelines needed for incorporating the change together with the facilities for increasing the compliance of health care staff. Initially, introducing this change of hand hygiene behaviour in a single hospital and carrying out a world-wide campaign, subsequent to the attainment of successful results, allow in enhancing compliance with different policies and procedures of health care organizations (Long, 2007).

References

Long, C. (2007). Hand Hygiene. United States of America: Routledge Publishers.

Messina, M., Brodell, L., Brodell, T & Mostow, E. (2008). Hand Hygiene in the dermatologist’s office: to wash or to rub?. Journal of American Academic Dermatology, Vol. 59(6), 1043-1049.

Polk, R. (2008). Factors Affecting Hand Hygiene and Compliance in Community Hospital. United States of America: Routledge Publishers.

Rhinehart, E and Friedman, M. (2009). Infection Control in Home Care and Hospice. United States of America: Routledge Publishers.

Tran, J. (2009). Comparison of Hand Hygiene Evaluations: A Literature Review. United States of America: McGraw Hill Publishers.

World Health Organization, (2009). WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care: First Global Patient Safety Challenge. United States of America: SAGE Publications.