The World Health Organization (WHO) has included an easy strategy for hand hygiene improvement in the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care (Advanced Draft). My 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene defines key moments when health care workers ought to be engaging in hand hygiene.
Image courtesy of WHO:
http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/5Moments_Image.gif
Using this model, health care workers are reminded to clean their hands at the following times:
- Before touching a patient
- Before clean/aseptic procedures
- After body fluid exposure or risk
- After touching a patient
- After touching patient surroundings
Though the instruction may seem like a review of basic principles, it helps overcome misleading language and complicated descriptions. Easy to learn, logical, and widely applicable, My 5 Moments serves as a reminder of one of the most important things any health care worker can do to protect themselves and others from infection: practice proper hand hygiene.
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