Hand hygiene recommendations released

Several professional societies, including the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, recently released recommendations on preventing health care-associated infections through hand hygiene.

The recommendations were sponsored by SHEA and aimed to provide practical advice based on updated scientific evidence and to help health care facilities implement programs to improve hand hygiene adherence. Recommendations on basic practices for hand hygiene at all acute care hospitals included the following:

• Routine hand hygiene with alcohol-based hand rubs (AHRBs) should involve a product with at least 62% alcohol.
• Antimicrobial or nonantimicrobial soap should be available/accessible in all patient care areas for routine hand hygiene.
• Clinicians should be involved in choosing products for hand hygiene to improve adherence.
• Unit- or institution-specific barriers to hand hygiene should be assessed with clinicians to identify locally relevant interventions.
• Hand hygiene adherence should be measured by direct observation, product volume, or automated monitoring.
• Preferential use of soap and water should be considered during norovirus outbreaks by clinicians caring for patients with known or suspected infection, in addition to contact precautions.
• Hot water should not be used for hand washing because of skin irritation.
• AHBRs should not be used when hands are visibly soiled.
• Triclosan-containing soaps should not be used.

The recommendations also included sections on recommended strategies for hand hygiene improvement, performance measures, and implementation strategies. The full text was published July 16 by Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology and is available online.