Handwashing

In today's afternoon session we went to the clinical learning unit which looks like a real clinic with about 8 beds and areas where nursing students can practice their clinical skills such as manual handling of a patient.

First we learned about handwashing. It was mainly the proper way to do it, they didn't really touch on the importance of it. It can be taken for granted but when handwashing was first introduced as a minimum hygeine standard in maternal wards, the number of mother and infant deaths went down by more than half. The ten steps of clinical handwashing (there is a different procedure for surgical) is :

1. Remove jewellery such as rings or a watch
2. Wet hands with warm water (not hot or cold)
3. apply soap (2 pumps) and rub palms together until soap is foamy
   
4. rub each palm over the back of the other hand
5. rub between your finger on each hand
6. rub your finger tips on the palms of each hand
7. rub around each of your thumbs
8. rub in circles on your palms, covering the whole area
9. rub all around each wrist and down at least five centimetres of your arm
10. Rinse hands clean under warm running water
11. Use a towel, elbow or foot (depending on type of sink) to turn of the tap. Do not use your hand.
12. Pat your hands clean with paper towels, then dispose.

Here are a couple of videos I found that show how it's done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrNJt73BG_8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzmYGifo5To&feature=related

When we did it first we had to cover our hands with a lotion called Verify that would make our hands glow under UV light if we didn't wash it off sufficiently. This was how we could tell if our hands were still "contaminated" or clean.