The search for the Hand Hygiene Champion of 2012 has now begun. The awards have been instigated by schülke and aim to recognise and reward hand hygiene initiatives. Julie Storr, Vice President of the IPS has confirmed her involvement on the judging panel and this year will be joined by Rose Gallagher Nurse Adviser for Infection Prevention and Control at the Royal College of Nursing and Annette Jeanes, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at University College London Hospitals ( UCLH) NHS Foundation Trust. |
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The Infection Prevention Society (IPS) commented: ‘we fully support the award and continue to support initiatives that maintain a focus on hand hygiene improvement as a core component of patient safety.’ To enter, tell us in around 250 words why you or your nominee has gone the extra mile to help improve hand hygiene. We’re looking for individuals (rather than teams) who have made a real difference. It doesn’t matter how simple the initiative is, so long as it has had a positive impact on hand hygiene. Your nominee might have innovated to make hand hygiene easier for staff, introduced a novel training idea, initiated measurement tools, raised the awareness of hand hygiene through for example fresh promotional materials or generally contributed to ensuring that hand hygiene remains central to your patient safety culture. |
We are keen to receive nominations from all practice settings including mental health, primary care/community, prison health, acute care, learning disabilities or midwifery. Whatever it is, we want to hear from you! |
| The closing date is 31 st May and winners will be notified by 30 th June. The winner and two runners up will receive a unique engraved crystal trophy, certificate, flowers, photographs and publicity in a number of professional publications. The awards will be presented at Infection Prevention 2012 whichwill take place at the ACC, Liverpool from 1st – 3rd October 2012. |
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| If you nominate the successful winner you’ll also receive a special certificate and prize. Just to help you get started in your nomination, these are some of the initiatives which impressed the judges last year: |
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An interactive Hand Hygiene Awareness Day within the hospital. Consisting of a series of activities including quizzes with prizes, a poster campaign and training on 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene and the use of UV light boxes to highlight the importance of hand hygiene in relation to cross infection. The development of a new hand hygiene audit tool that takes the focus of hand hygiene right to the point of care where the risk is The tool not only asks the auditor to consider whether a hand hygiene opportunity has been taken or not, but also what the activity was at the time. This allowed leaders in the clinical areas to focus training on specific tasks such as ‘before patient |
| contact’ or ‘after removing gloves’ and to target that training to specific staff groups such as ‘consultants’ or ‘porters’. The Champion programme has been designed and rolled out across all clinical areas to embed effective infection prevention and control practices at point of care. The main objective of the programme was to promote effective Hand Hygiene practices and monitor staff compliance against the benchmark of the World Health Organisation’s “your five moments for hand hygiene”. Champions are given tools and techniques to develop confidence in having those vital but challenging conversations with colleagues about local examples of poor hand hygiene practices observed and deliver local hand hygiene awareness sessions. Client participation and empowerment is an initiative in which several clients are involved in each hand hygiene/infection control training session. Clients are actively encouraged to challenge staff about their hand hygiene routine. A UV lightbox is often used to chelp communicate hygiene techniques during teaching sessions. |
| A life size paper – mache nursewas made by a local artist with the involvement of staff and the local community, including school children, the Mother’s Union and British Legion. The week long project saw a steady stream of staff, patients, and public all helping to make ‘Florence’, a life size nurse. Poster competitions and ultraviolet light box and fluorescent hand gel were also used throughout the week as fun activities to reinforce the underlying message of the importance of hand hygiene amongst staff, patients and the local community, which are very much part of the hospital. |
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| So, what are you waiting for? Email your nomination to handhygienechampion@schulke.co.uk Entries can also be sent FREEPOST to Schülke & Mayr UK Ltd, Freepost NEA17, Cygnet House, 1 Jenkin Road, Sheffield, S9 1AT Full terms and conditions can be found at: www.schulke.co.uk |
