Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.
Hand hygiene is a critical process in ensuring patient safety and quality treatment outcomes in health care facilities. As such, it is necessary for health care facilities to initiate and implement hand hygiene proposals to help in the reduction of infections acquired at the hospital like Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI). While the process of change implementation may offer various challenges, health care workers should stay determined to ensure effective hand hygiene practices. Nonetheless, hand hygiene is a process that applies to both health care professionals and patients. This paper outlines two possible barriers to effective handwashing techniques in preventing CAUTI and gives recommendations to overcome them.
One of the most highlighted barriers to effective hand hygiene is the lack of knowledge and training for hand hygiene measures among health care providers and patients. Studies have also found that lack of efforts has led to disregarding 80% of hand hygiene guidelines provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) (Mearkle, Houghton, Bwonya, & Lindfield, 2016). The second barrier to effective hand hygiene practice is infrastructural deficit, such as insufficient water supply and poor quality of antiseptic soap (Ataiyero, Dyson, & Graham, 2019). Subsequently, the successful implementation of an effective handwashing technique to reduce the rate of CAUTI requires certain recommendations to be considered.
Consequently, to overcome the barriers that have been mentioned, the hospitals management should hire public health professionals to provide handwashing education to patients and clinicians in the inpatient wards and outpatient. The public health officials will train patients and clinical professionals to wash their hands using soap and running water thoroughly. Additionally, the hospital will also have to ensure the procurement of high-quality antiseptic soaps and increase sanitizers to address the problem of insufficient water supply and poor quality of antiseptic soap. Thus, by adhering to the recommendations, the hospital will be able to implement the change proposal effectively and reduce the rate of CAUTI.
Overall, hand washing is an essential step towards the reduction of hospital-acquired infections like CAUTI. Therefore, health care facilities should ensure the implementation of effective hand hygiene practices. This can be done by addressing barriers such as lack of knowledge and training as well as an infrastructural deficit. Accordingly, the provision of handwashing education and procurement of alternative hand washing detergents, such as sanitizers are recommended to ensure effective implementation of the change proposal.
References
Ataiyero, Y., Dyson, J., & Graham, M. (2019). Barriers to hand hygiene practices among health care workers in sub-Saharan African countries: A narrative review. American Journal of Infection control, 47(5), 565-573. Web.
Mearkle, R., Houghton, R., Bwonya, D., & Lindfield, R. (2016). Barriers to hand hygiene in ophthalmic outpatients in Uganda: A mixed-methods approach. Journal of Ophthalmic Inflammation and Infection, 6(1), 1-6. Web.
Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.