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DDC team models hand washing, lowering infection
rates
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Ashley River Tower’s sixth floor Digestive Disease Acute Care Unit has
organized an interactive method of success to improve hand hygiene.
 Team Scrub members
include Krystal Myers, from bottom, Pat Brown,
Janine Hubbard, Krissie Spann, Sally Key and Ryan Dennis. Their ideas
were adopted throughout the medical center enterprise to initiate a
centerwide hand hygiene initiative that’s required by the Joint
Commission. Not pictured are Jennifer Weeks, Jessica Weigel and
Kristine Miles.
Team Scrub, as the group was called, was inspired to tackle this due to
low performance measures for hand hygiene; inconsistent compliance to
isolation procedures for both staff and visitors; being at risk for
increased rates of hospital antibiotic-resistant organisms such as
Vancomycin Resistant Enterocci (VRE) and Methicillin-Resistant
Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA); and the challenge of staff education with
rotating medical and health professions students in the unit. The
unit-based hand hygiene team set goals to reduce VRE and MRSA infection
rates by 30 percent by June, achieve 80 percent hand hygiene compliance
by June, plus improve staff, patient and visitor compliance to the
unit’s contact isolation policy.
“The program made employees more aware of what’s expected of them with
hand hygiene and keeping patients and staff safe,” said Janine Hubbard,
6East. Throughout the reporting period, audit data showed that ART 6th
floor staff was mostly above compliance rates.
To initiate change, the team promoted a hand washing blitz that
included audits, games, contests and patient and staff education. As a
result, the unit saw a vast improvement to their hand hygiene
compliance rates.
Friday, Feb. 25,
2011
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