What are you doing to improve patient safety?

March 3-9 was Patient Safety Awareness Week. One of the easiest processes to improve patient safety and prevent infections is hand hygiene, with information published regularly. I found a paper from the World Health Organization from 2009 devoted to Hand Hygiene.

While I continue to be astounded that healthcare workers’ compliance with hand hygiene in 2009 was less than 50% (including aids through doctors), I was also concerned by a survey from 2011 on public hand washing practices. In this report from Tork:

• 71% claimed to wash their hands on a regular basis;
• 58% have witnessed others leave a public restroom without hand washing;
• 35% have witnessed a co-worker leave the restroom without hand washing;
• 20% have witnessed a restaurant worker leave the restroom without hand washing.

In light of all these statistics, perhaps the greatest impact to improve safety is to personally practice good hand hygiene and to encourage others to perform hand hygiene. By not taking the next step and asking others about a lack of hand washing, we are still contributing to the problem.

So, what are you willing to do to improve safety? A good place to start is posting hand washing tips in your home and/or company bathroom. Now my company knows where they originated!

The Center for Disease Control has many resources on hand hygiene including http://www.cdc.gov/Features/HandWashing/.