Hand Hygiene: A Patient-Centered Safety Initiative

Hand hygiene has been recognized as the most important means of preventing the transmission of infection and there has been a great emphasis on ways to improve hand hygiene compliance by healthcare workers. Despite increasing evidence that patients' flora and the hospital environment are the source of many infections, few efforts have been directed at involving patients in their own hand hygiene. This webinar reviews the evidence for including patients more directly within hand hygiene initiatives, and uses the framework of patient-centered safety initiatives to identify the critical components of patient hand hygiene programs. Finally, outcome measures of patient hand hygiene and key areas for further research will be addressed.

At the end of this presentation the participant will be able to:
• Discuss the evolution of hand hygiene as an infection control measure
• Identify evidence supporting patient hand hygiene
• Assess the most critical components of a patient hand hygiene program
• Formulate outcome measures of patient hand hygiene initiatives

Eligible for 1.0 contact hour(s) of continuing education

**This activity is provided by Infection Control Today, a provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider Number 15619, for 1 contact hour of continuing education.


Speaker:

Tim Landers is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of antibiotic resistant infections across settings and the development of practical, evidence-based strategies to reduce infections. He holds a BS (Nursing) from Binghamton University, an MS (nursing) from Pace University, an MA (theology) from LaSalle University, and a PhD (epidemiology) from The Ohio State University. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Antibiotic Resistance at Columbia University. He was recently named a 2012 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar.

James Bingham is a research microbiologist with GOJO industries. His current research areas include Clostridium difficile spore biology, antimicrobial mechanisms of action, and patient hand contamination. He holds a Master’s degree in Food Microbiology from North Carolina State University and an undergraduate degree in Food Science from Cornell University

*Content and Speakers are subject to change