Hand Hygiene campaign

Waikato Hospital has been selected as one of three pilot sites for improving hand hygiene practice and reducing infection rates throughout New Zealand.

The hospital is currently running a campaign, which aims to see all healthcare workers across the hospital clean their hands – primarily with Sterigel hand rub – before and after every patient contact (or patient area contact) and ultimately wash their hands when needed – each and every time.

The Ministry of Heath has adopted this as a national campaign, ultimately to be taken up by all 21 district health boards. This follows the success in reducing infection rates of similar campaigns in other countries – e.g. UK, Canada, Switzerland, and USA.

The Waikato DHB campaign started in six pilot wards in June 2009, which will be followed by the rest of the hospital.

Key objectives:

• To adopt and promote behaviour that supports good hand hygiene practice at Waikato Hospital.
  
  
• To introduce and support a programme where all staff perform hand hygiene when needed.
  
  
• To monitor and evaluate the adoption of hand hygiene practice and outcomes of the hand hygiene programme and monitor key infection indicators.
  

Tom Watson Chief Medical Advisor	Patient	Sue Hayward Director of Nursing and Midwifery
Jan Adams Chief Operating Officer	Deborah Harris Nurse Practitioner	Jacquie Mitchell Thames Hospital and Family Health Team Manager