University of Iowa Children's Hospital is kicking off the second phase of a hand hygiene project. Fred Goldman, MD, PhD, pediatric cancer specialist at UI Children's Hospital, located in UI Hospitals and Clinics, talks about the importance of hand hygiene and this project:
We mentioned this is phase two of the hand hygiene project. What did phase one consist of?
The first phase of the project involved reeducating staff members at University of Iowa Hospitals on the proper way and the proper time to perform hand hygiene. Now, we normally teach hand hygiene at orientations for all new members of our staff, but it's very important to continue to educate them in this area.
What is the message in the second phase?
Phase 2 places emphasis on the patient and family regarding hand hygiene education. Keeping a child or a patient healthy begins with good hand washing technique and it shouldn't just happen at the hospital. We emphasis good hand washing at home, in the schools, and after kids come in from play.
Hand washing is such a simple idea. How often is it done incorrectly or not at all?
Hand hygiene includes both hand washing (wash the dirt off of the hands), and using an alcohol-based sanitizer, (the process that kills the germs on the hands). I'd say that people probably perform these two tasks maybe about 50 percent of the time than they should.
When is hand washing necessary?
Hand washing is very important if your hands are dirty. It really isn't good to use the hand sanitizer if the hands are dirty because you're just going to rub all the dirt around. We recommend hand washing before you eat, anytime your hands might be dirty, or after using the bathroom. If you have clean hands, then go ahead and apply the hand gel which will help remove any bacteria or germs that might still be on your hands.
What is the proper way and duration to wash hands?
Normally, you should wash your hands with soap and water for about 15 to 20 seconds and that's about the same amount of time it takes to say you're A-B-Cs or sing "Happy Birthday" twice.
Is there anything in particular people need to look for with hand sanitizers?
Not really, I think most of the hand sanitizers work about the same. They have an alcohol base to them. They're very important, as I said before, in killing germs. You need to apply it to your hands and then rub it all around—almost like if you were using soap and water, but using the hand sanitizer. It takes about 15 to 20 seconds of good rubbing with the sanitizer to do a good job.
If everyone washed their hands as often as they should, how much would it cut the spread of illness and disease?
That's a really hard question to answer. I think most viruses are spread by hands from person to person. It's particularly important in kids. Kids are the ones who put their hands in their mouths, and their nose, and all over the place, so when a child touches another child (which is very common in play), it's easy to see how viruses can spread.
It's important to emphasize good hand hygiene for the young kids, but the same applies to adults. While we don't put our hands in the same places that kids do, in between hand washing, there's always the potential to pick up germs, bacteria, and viruses on your hands. If we could cut down on the number of bacteria and viruses on our hands, I'm certain we'd be able to stop the spread of these viruses, particularly in the wintertime, when everybody is sniffling and out of work because they've got a cold.
How is UI Children's Hospital implementing phase two of the hand hygiene project?
This is cool. We're going to get the kids involved in this and we're going to have a kick-off of the project on May 1 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. We're going to have special events from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on the first floor Atrium of the Pappajohn Pavilion. It's filled with all kinds of fun activities centered on—guess what?—hands.
We're going to deputize the kids and they're be called Hand Washing Heroes. They'll go to stations to learn the proper way to put the hand soap on and we'll give them badges for learning all about hand washing. Then they're going to be our monitors.
They're going to be looking for other people to make sure that they're washing their hands right. This is a way of getting the kids involved and thus probably getting their parents and adults involved, too.
We've developed a good educational tool that helps people think about hand washing when they go home. It will be very important to carry that whole process through. And to that end, we've had some refrigerator magnets made and we want families to take them home and put them on the refrigerator so every day when they go into the refrigerator, they can go "Oops—I'm supposed to wash my hands before I get that food." This is a nice way to remind people gently at home to continue to use the process.
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