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Hand Washing Essay

1378 Words6 Pages

Hand washing with soap and water has been used as a measure of personal hygiene for centuries and has been rooted in religious and cultural habits. The relation between hand washing and the transmission of disease was established only two centuries ago. This can be deemed as relatively early with respect to the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister that occurred decades later. In mid 1800’s Ignaz Semmelweis hypothesized that there was a relation of poor hand hygiene and transmission of nosocomial infections. Semmelweis is considered the father of hand hygiene. He recommended that hands should be scrubbed in a chlorinated lime solution before every patient contact and proposed the first evidence that cleaning heavily contaminated hands with an antiseptic …show more content…

Organisms present on the patient’s skin, or that has been shed onto inanimate objects in close vicinity to the patient, gets transferred to the hands of healthcare personnel. These organisms are capable of surviving for at least several minutes on the hands of personnel. Next, handwashing or hand antisepsis by the personnel may be inadequate or absent entirely, or the means used for hand hygiene may be inappropriate. Finally, the contaminated hands of the care giver comes in direct contact with another patient, or with an inanimate object that comes into direct contact with the patient. Healthcare associated infections can be transmitted not only from infected or draining wounds, but also from frequently colonized areas of normal, intact patient skin.[4] According to WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care various means used for hand hygiene are water, plain (non-antimicrobial) soap, Alcohols,Chlorhexidine, Chloroxylenol, Hexachlorophene, Iodine and idophores, Quaternary ammonium salts, Triclosans and other agents.[1] The important factor in assessing the suitability of a hand hygiene product for use in a clinical setting are its efficacy in preventing the transmission of microorganisms, adverse effects (odour, skin damage) for health care providers, ease of access for users, affordability, and concerns about the induction of resistant

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Staphylococcus epidermidis is an opportunistic pathogen, meaning that they can cause infection more frequently and more easily in persons’ with a weakened immune system such as, HIV patients (CDC, 2015). This organism is seen primarily in nosocomial infections, also known as, hospital-acquired infections (Bukhari, 2004). This means that the organisms favors the hospital environment and is easily passed to a person while they are in the hospital. Ways that a person can get a Staphylococcus epidermidis infection is through IV’s, more commonly in drug users, catheters, and artificial equipment (Bukhari, 2004). Skin-to-skin contact can also be a form of getting this type of infection.

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If you don’t wash your hand you don’t know what kind of bacteria got in your hands. You can eventually die if you get a bad bacteria. That was one reason why many colonist

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Through the learning from week 1 and week 2, I have learnt that the most frequent adverse event in health-care delivery is health care-associated infections. It is essential for us to follow the infection control practices that both patients and us are at a risk of being infected. Standard Precautions involve the use of safe work practices and protective barriers, for example, the use of personal protective equipment(PPE). At first, I think Standard Precautions are very easy. Everyone knows PPE can protect us from infections and hand hygiene is important throughout the process.

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