Hand washing report
It has emerged not all staff at NHS Tayside have been cleaning their hands properly despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report presented to a meeting of NHS Tayside’s board on April 29 showed some staff had not been taking appropriate measures to avoid cross-infection.
The hand hygiene compliance report showed figures from March 2020 to February 2021.
The report was part of a paper on Healthcare Associated Infection presented at Thursday’s hybrid NHS Tayside board meeting.
Monthly audits of hand hygiene compliance are carried out by clinical teams in a wide range of clinical settings across NHS Tayside.
The report explained “the compliance figure represents the score derived from measuring the combined compliance of opportunity and technique”.
Compliance across NHS staff monitored - nurses, medical staff, allied health professionals and ancillary staff - as a whole fluctuated from a low of 80 per cent compliance in September 2020 to a high of 94 per cent compliance in April 2020.
NHS Tayside’s nurses showed the greatest compliance with an average score of 95 per cent compliance over the 12 months.
NHS Tayside’s director of nursing Claire Pearce presented the report and highlighted concern over non-compliance with hand hygiene.
She said: “Infection control are working with the business unit to enable us to drill down to the element of noncompliance.
“For example is it the lack of taking an opportunity to wash your hands or is it putting the soap onto dry hands, etc so we really need that detail so our teams can improve compliance.”
After the meeting a spokesperson for NHS Tayside said the health board was committed to infection prevention and control.
The spokesperson said: “NHS Tayside is committed to infection prevention and control and throughout the pandemic, hand hygiene has been a key area of focus to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus.
“Additional measures have been put in place since the start of the pandemic with increased provision of hand hygiene facilities including alcohol-based hand rub for use in all ward and public areas.
“Educational resources and training have also been put in place for staff.”