Hand Hygiene

I got an email about hand hygiene this week and education on it. I have to confess that I didn't read it but I know that I would probably have considered what they consider a minimum to be way less than what I practice already. It saddens me that I can say that and I hope all practitioners can say it equally but it is highly important in all aspects of life in my opinion.

You infect and are infected after all usually by what you touch. So it makes sense that what is good in the clinic may be good for life in general. I feel that I have developed an inherent sense of when my hands are clean and when they are not and thereby the things that I should and should not do, if that makes sense.

So imagine today my horror when about ten seconds after I had pressed the hospital staff lift button with my right knuckle that I rubbed my nose with that very knuckle. I was placed in a situation where I could go back and wash my hands and face but it was a Friday afternoon and I think that got the better of me and I continued on towards my long drive home. I did wash my hands and face immediately on arriving home as I normally do however if it makes you feel better.

PS: I think the other thing that made me not turn back is the reality of going to a public toilet to wash one's face and hands adequately well. Anyway whether that really was the deciding factor or not matters not since I became instantly aware of the mistake I had made showing how acutely sharp this hand cleanliness sense has become for me. Fortunately it was only me who came to risk in this situation.

PPS (update 9/3/2019) - I completed the hand hygiene modules online and while I found the site had some confusion - one set of quiz questions were out of place and dealt with the topic that came after the one in question. There were also problems with semantics and someone who thinks on the situation analytically like me always has problems with these simplistic quizzes.

Two examples - in one photo the doctor touches the bedside curtains but does not examine or touch patient, zone or chart etc and leaves and the correct answer is apparently that no hand hygiene is necessary in this scenario. I think that is incorrect - while the patient is not affected, the doctor has touched one of the dirtiest things in any medical setting by handling the curtain and should wash hands as soon as possible for themselves if no one else.

The second example is one where the health professional has a stethoscope that is red in colour draped on the back of their neck, and in a subsequent photo it is green. I wouldn't mind this little continuity issue if they weren't so pedantic in trying to express all the steps required through examining the photos (and it is hard to relay the information admittedly) - but all through this I kept thinking to myself that if they were going to be so pedantic on the photos that they could either correct the pictures so the same stethoscope is seen in both photos - or they put in an extra step about disinfecting the new stethoscope and hand hygiene between touching and using each stethoscope also.

The site has a slap together feel about it, but even with it's issues it is useful and I did pass the quizzes in all the modules in case you were wondering.