Hand Hygiene
Hand hygiene is recognised as the single most important measure that individuals can take to interrupt the spread of communicable diseases. High levels of hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers have been linked to reductions in the incidence of healthcare-associated infections and spread of multiple drug-resistant organisms.
Hand Hygiene Audit
The HSE published a national protocol for measuring how good healthcare workers are at cleaning their hands for each of the WHO 5 moments of Hand Hygiene. This measurement is called a hand hygiene audit and the results are expressed as the percentage of times hands are cleaned when they should be. This ensures that hand hygiene is measured the same way in each hospital so that changes can be monitored over time.