Poor healthcare hand hygiene

Would you want a chef to wash his or her hands before preparing a meal for you? Similarly, would you expect  surgeons to have clean hands if they were operating on you? If so, you may be shocked by a new Australian report into hand hygiene in the healthcare sector.

The report found staff at one in five of Australia’s major public hospitals do not wash their hands enough – and doctors seem to be the worst offenders.

Almost 20% of public hospitals are failing to meet national hand hygiene standards, according to  data released by the federal government.

Doctors and nurses will now be given more information about how they can continue to protect their patients from the spread of infectious diseases after the national data’s release last week.

The research reviewed staff behaviour at 233 hospitals and was last week published on the MyHospitals website, which launched in December 2010 and provides Australians with important performance information about public hospitals and a growing number of private hospitals.

Failing to meet the national standard were 19% of hospitals.

Health Minister Tanya Plibersek said the “simple act” of washing hands is the “single most effective way of reducing the spread of infectious diseases in Australian hospitals.

“The release of this data will give doctors and nurses the information they need to continue driving down infection rates for diseases such as serious staph blood infections in their hospitals,” she said.

Ms Plibersek said patients had a right to know about the performance of their public hospitals and that the publication of hand hygiene rates would help improve hospital safety and quality.

The Medical Journal of Australia reported the work of Hand Hygiene Australia in its first two years of implementing the National Hand Hygiene Initiative (NHHI) had resulted in widespread improvement in hand hygiene rates among health care workers, for both public and private hospitals.

What are your thoughts on this data? Share your thoughts on this article by commenting in the box below. Click here to view the hand hygiene practices of your local public hospital.