By Healthcare Facilities Today

Hand washing, while essential to infection control and prevention, suffers from perennially low compliance rates, sometimes as low as 40 percent in healthcare settings, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control. On it's website, Becker's Hospital Review posted ten free downloadable tools to increase compliance. Here are the first five.

1. WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Healthcare. The World Health Organization report contains information on healthcare-associated infections, models of transmission by hands, a review of methods for hand hygiene, recommended methods for hand hygiene, behavioral considerations for improving hand hygiene compliance and a review of potential barriers to hand hygiene.

2. CDC Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Healthcare Settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released recommendations of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee and the HICPAC/SHEA/APIC/IDSA Hand Hygiene Task Force in 2002. This is still the most current source of recommendations.  

3. Joint Commission - Measuring Hand Hygiene Adherence: Overcoming the Challenges. The Joint Commission offers a comprehensive monograph on measuring hand hygiene compliance. The 10-chater work covers foundations for hand hygiene measurement, developing measurements strategies, observing adherence to hand hygiene guidelines, measuring product use, conducting surveys, assessing the thoroughness of hand hygiene and related aspects, international hand hygiene improvement tools and efforts, displaying and interpreting hand hygiene data for maximum effectiveness, factors contributing to hand hygiene improvement and resources for measurement and improvement.

4. "Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands" Poster. The CDC offers a hand hygiene reminder poster modeled after the British World War II motivational slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On" for reminding people in healthcare facilities to wash their hands.

5. "1,000,000,000,000 germs can live in one gram of poop" Poster. The CDC offers a handy reminder hygiene poster for reminding people to wash their hands after using the bathroom.

See all the free downloads.