Some health care facilities actively promote hand hygiene by all staff and visitors entering a ward – is this a good approach?
The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care (Advanced Draft) clearly recommend alcohol-based handrubbing at the point of care. The approach of positioning alcohol-based handrubs at locations remote to the patient (e.g. at the entrance to every ward or in corridors or at health-care facility entrances), has been taken in some countries with the rationale that this provides a strong message that the health-care facility takes the issue of hand hygiene seriously. However, on closer examination of this approach, such a strategy might actually be damaging to long-term success and could result in inappropriate actions and misunderstandings by both staff and patients about how pathogens spread. It can encourage inappropriate and illogical hand hygiene action, which does not correspond to any real indication, and therefore does not contribute to reductions in HAI. Unless educational investment is made to ensure that staff and visitors understand the Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, complia
