Happy World Hand Hygiene Day! Healthcare providers everywhere work daily to prevent the spread of diseases in healthcare facilities all over the world. In light of this, we want to share our gratitude by promoting healthy hand hygiene practices.
This year, WHO (World Health Organization) is focusing on sharing the importance of hand hygiene; we want to share best practices for healthy hand hygiene and why it’s important when at point of care for patients and healthcare workers.
Point of Care
Point of Care refers to the moments when healthcare workers are in contact with patients and are at the highest risk of spreading infections. In a hospital, there are many locations where workers are at the highest risk of spreading diseases from touching.
5 Most Contaminated High Touch Surfaces in Hospitals (Infection Control Today):
- Bed rails
- Bed surfaces
- Supply carts
- Over-bed tales
- Intravenous pumps
These high touch surfaces overlap with the 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene that most healthcare workers are familiar with. The 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene approach defines the key moments when healthcare workers should perform hand hygiene. This evidence-based, field-tested, user-centered approach is designed to be easy to learn, logical, and applicable in a wide range of settings.
5 Moments for Hand Hygiene (World Health Organization):
- Before patient contact
- Before aseptic task
- After body fluid exposure
- After patient contact
- After contact with patient surroundings
“If you don’t make it [hand hygiene products] convenient right there at that second, no one is going to go around the corner and wash their hands. It must be available in the flow of what the employee is doing."William Parks, MD,
To combat Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI’s) at the source, Symmetry® provides Point of Care Tools like 50 ml Tray Table Clips, 50 ml Suction Cups, and 550 ml Suction Cups. These tools make hand hygiene accessible to healthcare workers during the 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene, reducing the spread of disease and encouraging healthy hand hygiene practices.
Lowering HAI’s
With the high-risk spread of HAIs and point of care being our focus, Symmetry provides helpful educational and awareness tools to support hand hygiene practices for all, not just in hospital areas but in most indoor settings. Symmetry’s goal is to lower HAI’s, with systems such as SBMS (Symmetry Behavior Modification System). SBMS is a set of unique, cost-effective tools based on six key tenets designed to INSPIRE hand hygiene compliance.
SBMS Six Key Tenets are:
- Benevolence
- Variation
- Responsibility
- Emotion
- Accountability
- Direction
With SBMS, Symmetry offers tools that provide Education and Awareness such as Digital Behavioral Driver Placards that use motion and sound to trigger a response to take action. Allowing for quick and easy customization of campaigns and initiatives, and offering image and video variation that keeps messaging fresh to avoid sign fatigue. SBMS also offers Symmetry Visual Lighting Cue (VLC) which uses light projections to trigger a response to take action. These light projections utilize various emojis from thumbs up, and smiley face, to heart.
Healthy hand hygiene is a daily practice and commitment for healthcare facilities. We thank our Healthcare providers for their amazing work to keep us all safe.
Contact your local representative to see how Symmetry’s point of care tools can help improve compliance in your facility.