even hand hygiene has a technique to it

O2O311 - Mikky's 19th Birthday. Happy Birthday =D !!!

I had my first nursing clinical simulation laboratory (NURS5081) yesterday and I thought it was pretty interesting, so I'm going to post up some of the notes I took in class =). 

Hand Hygiene (HH) or washing your hands is the single most important practice to reduce transmission of infection by reducing the number of micro-organisms on your hands. There are 2 types of soaps: 

1. Antimicrobial - hand rub that doesn't require water.
2. Non-antimicrobial - where soap and water is required.

There are 5 key moments where hand hygiene is required:

1.  Before touching a patient.
2. Before a procedure.
3. After a procedure / body fluid exposure risk.
4. After touching a patient.
5. After touching a patient's surroundings.

There are 4 different types of hand washes:

1. Routine / Social Hand Rub - when your hands aren't visibly dirty.
2. Routine / Social Hand Wash - when your hands are visibly dirty; wash with water.
3. Aseptic - when you're trying to be as sterile as possible; when washing, the entire process should be ~ 60 seconds.
4. Surgical.

I'll won't blog about the other topics that I learned about because I found hand hygiene to be most interesting, besides Sim Man and the simulation mannequins used for practice. Now, they're just disturbing, especially the ones in the classroom because they actually have their eyes open. The ones in the simulated hospital rooms had their eyes closed. They're disturbing because they're made to behave just like how an actually human being would behave in that scenario. With just the press of a button, you can make them breathe heavily, quicken their pulse, moan in pain and even vomit! Very disturbing indeed... I wouldn't want to be near them alone, at night >.> ...
 

Anyways, back to hand hygiene. I found a moderately detailed video that shows you how to properly wash your hands. We actually had to do that in class. We would first use the 'glitter bug' cream to rub our hands in; then we would wash our hands, with soap, and then by using a UV light, we would see how well we washed our hands. The first time I washed my hands, it turned out pretty bad =S I had a lot of white patches (bacteria). The second time I did it, it was better, but I need to remember to wash my wrists and my fingernails better =.='. 

Hand Washing Technique.