Hand hygiene has always been a necessary measure to prevent the spread of various diseases. Currently, the need for regular and frequent hand washing is dictated by the existing and actively developing COVID 19 epidemic (Beiu et al., 2020). In this regard, it is necessary to carry out several changes in healthcare institutions. The most applied changes will be the regular treatment of the hands of medical personnel and the patient with an antiseptic or alcohol solution. Nurses should assist patients and their relatives by monitoring and teaching proper hand hygiene. The changes applied also include continuous training of nurses in the field of hygiene and patient care. In addition, the changes are that nurses inform patients and their families and teach them how to wash their hands properly.
As an implementation plan, the following steps are proposed, which include training nurses in proper hand hygiene, regular handling of everyday items such as elevator buttons, door handles, and more. In addition, a necessary step of the plan will be to educate patients by nurses about the importance of handwashing. It is also essential to ensure that patients and their family members have access to means to remove bacteria from their hands (CDC, 2021). Such means can be washbasins with contactless access to the detergent solution, antiseptics, or alcohol balls. The final measures will be the training of patients and their families, the provision of medical facilities with soap, water, and the necessary antiseptic solutions, as well as the processing of common-use items. These measures will reduce the spread of pathogenic bacteria and reduce the spread of infection.
When developing the plan, the evidence-based practice was used since there was an urgent problem that needed to be solved. The issue is that nurses may forget about hand treatment and inform patients about the importance of this event. Patients often neglect hand hygiene because the medical staff forgets about it. As a result, this leads to infection and the spread of disease from person to person. In this case, it is necessary to provide medical personnel with antiseptic solutions, soap, and water and regularly conduct training not only for patients but also for the staff of medical institutions (Haverstick et al., 2017). Combining these measures will be enough to deal with the problem of infection through dirty hands.
Evaluation of the proposed measures will monitor the improvement of the patient’s condition. That is, how effective is the patient’s recovery, or are there any obstacles to this. Also, the assessment is whether the patient has a desire to recover, as well as to lead a healthy lifestyle in the future. In addition, similar evaluation criteria will also be applicable to medical personnel, that is, control over the fact that the infection does not spread among personnel.
A potential obstacle may be that patients may start neglecting hand washing again after undergoing treatment. To overcome this difficulty, nurses should conduct patient training and demonstrate, based on statistical data, how effective hand washing is. Another obstacle may be the inability to provide unhindered access to water and soap on the territory of a medical institution. The solution to this problem can be the equipment of quick hand treatment points. This will increase the effectiveness of measures and allow patients, their family members, and medical staff to handle their hands without hindrance.
In conclusion, hand hygiene is an essential measure for the non-proliferation of infection, including COVID 19. In this regard, a mandatory action plan is needed that will allow patients and staff to have access to hand treatment facilities. It is imperative to implement the proposed strategies and consider all obstacles so that these strategies are effective. These recommendations should also be implemented in nursing practice on an ongoing basis, as they will contribute to the reduction of certain diseases of patients and people.
References
Beiu, C., Mihai, M., Popa, L., Cima, L., & Popescu, M. N. (2020). Frequent hand washing for COVID-19 prevention can cause hand dermatitis: Management tips. Cureus, 12(4), e7506. Web.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2021). When and how to wash your hands. Web.
Haverstick, S., Goodrich, C., Freeman, R., James, S., Kullar, R., & Ahrens, M. (2017). Patients’ hand washing and reducing hospital-acquired infection. Critical Care Nurse, 37(3), e1-e8. Web.