Patient Safety is in Your Hands
June is Hand Hygiene Awareness Month at BWH
Consistent hand hygiene protects our patients from developing hospital-acquired infections due to organisms such as MRSA and VRE.
“While caring for patients, our hands can become contaminated with billions of bacteria that are potentially lethal to the next patient we touch,” said Deborah Yokoe, MD, of Infectious Disease.
This was first documented in the 1840s by Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian obstetrician, who is credited with the first evidence that cleaning heavily contaminated hands with an antiseptic agent between patients could reduce healthcare-associated infections more effectively than washing with plain soap and water.
In 1846, Semmelweis observed that women whose babies were delivered by students and physicians in the First Clinic at the General Hospital of Vienna consistently had a higher mortality rate than women whose babies were delivered by midwives in the Second Clinic. He noted that physicians who went directly from the autopsy suite to the obstetrics ward had a disagreeable odor on their hands despite washing their hands with soap and water upon entering the obstetrics clinic.
His theory: puerperal fever, which was causing the deaths, was caused by “cadaverous particles” transmitted from the autopsy suite to the obstetrics ward via the hands of students and physicians. In 1847, Semmelweis insisted that students and physicians clean their hands with a chlorine solution between each patient. This resulted in a dramatic drop in the maternal mortality rate in the First Clinic.
Today, the same principles hold true. “By adhering to hand hygiene protocol, we can reduce infection rate and protect our patients from the spread of diseases like MRSA and VRE,” Yokoe said. “Alcohol-based gels, such as Purell, can kill over 99.9 percent of the bacteria on your hands within seconds.”
When resistant organisms like MRSA are spread from patient to patient, the hands of health care providers are the most frequent mode of transmission. A patient who is not infected or not showing signs of infection may still carry organisms that could be transferred to another patient if proper hand hygiene and other infection control precautions are not taken.
Studies have shown that the hands of up to 41 percent of care givers sampled after patient contact and before hand hygiene were positive for VRE. In addition, VRE were recovered from a number of environmental surfaces in patient rooms.
In 2001, BWH introduced Purell, an alcohol-based hand-sanitizing rub, to all intensive care units and medical units, and soon there after installed Purell dispensers throughout the hospital. This year in June, BWH launched a campaign to reinforce this crucial element of patient safety.
For more information on BWH’s hand hygiene policy, visit Compliance Corner on www.bwhpikenotes.org.