• PR: Home Health Deemed Surveys Document Hand Hygiene Lapses[®]  [REF: IC, RN, StEd] Perspectives April 2014, Vol 34, #4, Pg 10  JCp1404_B2

Although the article focus is on Home Health, we discovered [Pearl] a reference to an infection control tool that can help any organization improve hand hygiene.  It is called ‘Five Moments for Hand Hygiene’.  It is based on the revised 2009 WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care.  It is a wonderfully straightforward identification of the 5 critical times when healthcare workers should clean their hands…to save lives and stop the spread of drug-resistant germs. The 5 moments all clinical staff should know to Clean your hands are:

• before touching a patient when approaching him/her.
• immediately before performing a clean/aseptic procedure.
• immediately after an exposure risk to body fluids (and after glove removal).
• after touching a patient and her/his immediate surroundings, when leaving the patient’s side.
• after touching any object or furniture in the patient’s immediate surroundings, when leaving – even if the patient has not been touched.

The Five Moments are part of a May 5, 2014 call to action campaign by WHO entitled ‘Save Lives: Clean Your Hands‘.  The campaign is supported by a number of free tools to include an excellent summarizing poster, leaflet, pocket reminder and instructions for hand washing/hand rub sanitizing. Links for these tools are available in the comments section of this article.
Tip: Boost your Hand Hygiene efforts by marking May 5th as the introduction and/or implementation of a My Five Moments for Hand Hygiene Campaign.  Then incorporate the Five Moments into ongoing training.
See also: Guide to implementation of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy (revised Aug 2009) Full version [pdf 4.37Mb], Summary [pdf 2.22Mb]