 | >> Patient Safety >> Hand Hygiene |
What is ‘hand hygiene’?
Hand hygiene refers to the removal of microorganisms (‘germs’) from hands through handwashing with soap and water or the use of an alcohol-based hand rub (see Hand Hygiene Information Sheet for more information)
What are health care-associated infections?
Sometimes when patients are admitted to the hospital, they can get infections. These are called health care-associated infections.
How will the public reporting of hand hygiene compliance affect compliance among health care professionals?
There are many factors that will improve hand hygiene compliance. Mandatory public reporting is one element. The increasing recent attention on the issue as well as the provincial government’s multifaceted hand hygiene program called Just Clean Your Hands are important to ensuring effective hand hygiene at the right times.
Why is hand hygiene so important?
Hand hygiene is an important practice for health care providers and has a significant impact on reducing the spread of infections in hospitals. Hand hygiene is a different way of thinking about safety and patient care and involves everyone in the hospital, including patients and health care providers.
Effective hand hygiene practices in hospitals play a key role in improving patient and provider safety, and in preventing the spread of health care-associated infections.
What St. Francis Memorial Hospital is doing to support effective hand hygiene:
What can patients do to help improve their own safety?
Hand hygiene involves everyone in the hospital, including patients. Hand cleaning is one of the best ways you and your health care team can prevent the spread of many infections. Patients and their visitors should also practice good hand hygiene before and after entering patient rooms. (see Hand Hygiene Information Sheet for more information)
More patient-specific information is available at www.ontario.ca/patientsafety and www.oha.com/patientsafetytips.
In order to ensure that people with disabilities have appropriate access to health care services at St. Francis Memorial Hospital, and in order to comply with the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, the St. Francis Memorial Hospital has been very active in recent years identifying barriers, removing barriers and preventing the creation of new barriers.
Documents and policies under the AODA Customer Service Standard will be provided to a person with a disability in a mutually agreed upon format that takes into account the person’s disability. This information will be provided as soon as possible.
If any emergency procedures, plans or public safety information are made available to the public, they will be provided to a person with a disability in a mutually agreed upon format that takes into account the person’s disability, as required by the AODA Integrated Accessibility Standards. This information will be provided as soon as practicable.
For copies or alternative format contact Joanne Pecarskie, 613-756-3044 # 234 or Fax 613-756-0106
