When it comes to hand hygiene, it’s not that healthcare workers, families, and residents have not been educated, it’s that sometimes the environments are not set up in a way to support best practices. One solution is to have more access to hand hygiene dispensers. Some facilities have them only in the hallway, others only in the resident rooms. We suggest having both.
When dispensers are in the hallway only, hand hygiene can be missed when moving from one resident to the next in a shared room. When dispensers are in the resident rooms only, we observe missed opportunities for hand hygiene upon entering a resident room and while passing food trays. Consider adding more alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR) to your facility to obtain higher hand hygiene compliance. Most vendors are willing to install additional dispensers at no cost.
Utilize this link to The Joint Commission Acceptable Practices of Using Alcohol-Based Hand Rub criteria to ensure compliance is met.