Posts Tagged ‘Hand Hygiene’
We would not be a good hospital blog if we did not talk about hand washing. So let us turn this into a little Q & A session. If you want, you can also find most of this information on the Center for Disease Control‘s website as well. They even have videos!
Q: When should you wash your hands?
A: Often. Not to sound overly paranoid, but washing your hands frequently regardless of what you are doing is always a good idea. If you hate the idea of washing your hands for no apparent reason, we suggest you at least do it…
Before you prepare food, eat food, take medicine, give medicine, deal with a sick person, treat a wound, deal with your contacts or do anything else that requires you to put your hands near your mouth, nose, eyes or ears. If, for any reason you are preparing something (like food or medicine) that will somehow enter your body or that of someone else in any way, wash your hands.
Wash your hands after you go to the bathroom, deal with an injured or sick person, give medicine, prepare or eat food, handle pets, touch money or any other publicly handled items, change a diaper, handle waste products of any kind, or sneeze, cough or blow your nose into your hands.
Wash your hands constantly if you are ill or if you are around sick people for any length of time!
Q: Should I even use soap?
Oh absolutely, water is not enough when cleaning your hands. The oils, bacteria, soils and what have you on your hands and wrists will not come off with water only. There needs to be soap to break down these materials so they will come off with water.
Q: What kind of soap do you use to wash your hands?
A: More recent studies have shown that anti-bacterial soaps are not more effective than soaps without those agents. Studies go back and forth on whether or not anti-bacterial soaps can cause the creation of resistant strains of bacteria, but truthfully the jury is still out on this little tidbit of information. If you are buying soap, you don’t need to buy the anti-bacterial type. The soaps without these bacteria killing agents work just fine. If you go to wash your hands and the only thing available is anti-bacterial soap, still use it simply because you are a lot safer for washing your hands with it than not washing your hands at all.
Q: So…should I use hand sanitizer?
A: Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are a yes, yes, yes. We strongly recommend using hand sanitizers with a 60% or more alcohol level to clean your hands. If you have soil on your hands, then go ahead and wash them first before applying an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. No, we don’t recommend pouring straight whiskey onto your hands, it smells bad, it’s sticky and people will think you have a drinking problem.
Q: So what is the best way to wash your hands?
A: Ha, yes, there is a proper procedure. Putting the soap in the palm of your hand and then rinsing it off immediately is not going to work, sorry. In this order and in this way if you please:
- Using the warmest water you can stand and from what is available, wet your hands before applying soap.
- Apply soap and work up a good lather. Scrub your hands vigorously, getting between the fingers, above the wrist, underneath the fingernails (use a fingernail brush if you have one), the backs of your hands, the palms, basically every.
- Perform Step 2 for 20 seconds before rinsing. The CDC says that singing “Happy Birthday” twice is a good indicator of how long to wash your hands. Personally we won’t recommend this because it wasn’t our idea and because we don’t want you to hate us.
- Dry your hands off with a disposable paper towel and try to turn the faucet off with same paper towel. If no paper towels are available, settle for the hand dryer, even though it does not help eliminate bacteria.
That’s it folks. We have now covered hand washing, if you have any further questions about this simple, but necessary procedure, you can either visit the CDC website (link above) or talk to a nurse or doctor or certified food handler about the necessity of hand washing. Yes, certified food handlers actually have to take a mini-course on hand washing, go figure.
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