Healthcare workers are handwashing warriors, sometimes washing their hands over 100 times in a 12-hour shift, or at least they should be. Studies have found that nurses only complied with handwashing procedures 42% of the time and physicians only 38% of the time. While hand hygiene is a crucial aspect of all businesses (now considered part of their corporate social responsibility), its importance is elevated in the healthcare world due to the high possibility of dangerous pathogen transmission. Handwashing is the best defense against the spread of disease and is critical to maintaining the safety of the facility, patients, visitors, and staff. The majority of the responsibility to maintain proper hand hygiene falls on healthcare staff as they proceed through and interact within so many different critical areas in the facility.
Throughout the day, healthcare workers need to perform hand hygiene events countless times for a myriad of reasons. It’s hard to keep track of each of the specific instances in which a hand wash is needed. In an effort to make these times easier to remember The World Health Organization defined the 5 Moments of Hand Hygiene. The 5 moments of hand hygiene explain when a healthcare worker needs to be washing up in order to maintain the utmost health and safety for everyone in their facility.
Staff remembering these “5 Moments of Hand Hygiene” is pivotal in the overall health and safety of a healthcare facility. And washing your hands at each of these instances takes a massive amount of time. In an effort to give some of this time back to nurses and doctors the use of instant hand sanitizers is leveraged frequently in their field. While the time savings are valuable, hand sanitizers can be detrimental to skin health. At Meritech we understand one of the greatest values our CleanTech® Fully Automated Handwashing Stations offer is the time savings without compromising efficacy and promoting healthy skin. CleanTech® can help healthcare workers follow the 5 Moments of hand hygiene outlined above while saving time and protecting one of their most important assets, their hands.