Hand Hygiene: The Forgotten Basics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotionis hosting on its Web site a terrific blog, Safe Healthcare, which this week is focusing on a series of blog entries on hand hygiene. In the first installment, CDC epidemiologist Kate Ellingson, PhD, reviews and clarifies the essentials of proper hand hygiene protocols and practices. As she explains, "In patient care, the first rule is to do no harm. I believe a huge component of that concept is hand hygiene – ensuring that every patient is touched only by clean hands. Such a simple concept, yet we know that half or fewer of healthcare personnel actually clean their hands when they should. Perhaps it’s too simple, so much so that we dismiss its importance. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we get many requests to clarify those procedures and to find out why people don’t follow them." In the second blog installment, Krissy Brinsley-Rainisch, MPH, a CDC health communications specialist, emphasizes the role that patients and their family members play in engaging in good hand hygiene. To read the blog and user comments, CLICK HERE.