Clinical Compliance Report

Clinical governance ensures that organisations become accountable for continuously improving their services and safe-guarding standard of care ‘by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish’ (Scally and Donaldson 1998). Clinical audit emerged from within the clinical governance framework and is now seen as one of the most important elements of clinical governance (NICE 2002); it has been defined as ‘a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review against explicit criteria and the implementation of change’. The student intends to focus this audit on staff knowledge in relation to Hand Hygiene and Infection Control and to evaluate the hand hygiene education

The main reasons for developing a HCAI are poor hand hygiene by healthcare staff, medical device related infections such as intravenous lines and urinary catheters and the overuse or improper use antimicrobials. Hand hygiene is the cornerstone measure to prevent healthcare associated infection (HCAI) and it has been shown that MRSA is primarily transmitted from patient to patient via the hands of healthcare professionals (Donskey, 2009). Although hand hygiene is the simplest, most effective and most cost effective way to prevent the spread of HCAIs (Pratt et al. 2007) (Kilpatrick et al. 2013), adherence to hand hygiene among health care professionals remains low worldwide (WHO, 2009). Perceived barriers to adherence with hand hygiene practice as described by the WHO (2009) are many and include skin irritation caused by hand hygiene agents, inaccessible hand hygiene

Larson & Bobo (1992) state that while ethanol and isopropanol may reduce viable bacterial counts on hands, this does not obviate the need for hand washing with water and soap whenever hands are dirty or visibly contaminated with proteinaceous materials, e.g blood (Larson, 1988). Several studies recommend, the use of gloves and routine hand washing with soap and water after care of CDI patients rather than alcohol based hand rub for mechanical removal of spores from hands (Siegel et al, 2007) (Haut, 2008) (Vonberg et al. 2008).

The questionnaire was a little tricky, which of the following is the main route of transmission of potentially harmful germs between patients? The correct Recommendations

From the results, we can see that education has a positive influence on HCW knowledge in relation to HH and IPC.

After training, the response rate rose to 100% from 93.75% after training, answers varied pre and post education. If the question was asking what are sources of germs, then all would be correct, however, respondents were asked to pick one. Germs can be spread through the air for example airborne measles, are highly infectious and can survive in the air or on a surface for up to 2 hours after an infected person has sneezed or coughed in the area (CDC,