Wallsend Aged Care Facility Resident’s Hand Hygiene Project

Romano Purzuelo¹

¹HNELHD

Introduction: Wallsend Aged Care Facility (WACF) is a long term care facility with 98 beds capacity that housed residents from age ranging on early 30’s to late 90’s.

Hand hygiene is an essential strategy in reducing and preventing the spread of infection. While the recommended use of soap and water and alcohol hand based rub is popular, there is poor compliance with the aged care residents due to their cognitive and functional ability to wash their hands.

Aim: To increase resident’s compliance and awareness on hand hygiene by 80% for six months using the anti-bacterial hand wipes.

Method: Using Continuous Practice Improvement Framework, staff identified the issues. Following the collection of pre-data, the project team developed a hand hygiene audit tool and information booklet, implemented hand hygiene using anti-bacterial hand wipes. Multiple PDSA cycles were completed. Post intervention data was collected via audit.

Results: At the 6 month evaluation, an increase in compliance with hand hygiene was evaluated through resident experiences and audit result. All residents had been made aware the importance of hand hygiene. A monthly audit showed a rocketing result on compliance using anti-bacterial hand wipes. The Residential Aged Care Facility information booklet on cleaning hands using anti-bacterial hand wipes is being considered for Hunter New England Health Local Health District implementation.

Conclusion: WACF residents hand hygiene project promote a culture of safety against infection transmission and awareness on importance of hand hygiene. The use of hand wipes has proven a high compliance among residential aged care residents.

Biography:

Clinical Nurse Specialist -Infection Prevention Service for Community and Aged Care Services for 3 years.