This article describes when and how to wash your hands effectively. Healthcare-associated infections are a risk to patients and service users, and nurses have a duty of care to protect these individuals from preventable infections. Nurses should practise good infection prevention, the basis of which is effective hand hygiene.
The nurse should understand the importance of handwashing for infection prevention.
The nurse should know when to wash their hands and the steps involved in effective handwashing using soap and water or hand cleansing using alcohol hand gel.
Clinical skills articles can help update your practice and ensure it remains evidence based. Apply this article to your practice. Reflect on and write a short account of:
The circumstances in which is it not appropriate to use alcohol hand gel and why.
The reasons why adherence to recommended hand hygiene practice might be low in modern healthcare settings.
The ‘five moments for hand hygiene’ described by the World Health Organization and the risks of hand contamination.
Subscribers can upload their reflective accounts at:
Nursing Standard. 30, 3, 34-36. doi: 10.7748/ns.30.3.34.e9691
Correspondence Peer reviewAll articles are subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software.
Received: 16 October 2015
Accepted: 21 November 2015
or
Alternatively, you can purchase access to this article for the next seven days. Buy now
Are you a student? Our student subscription has content especially for you.
Find out more
