One of the pillars of quality health care is hygiene, which essential because it helps prevent a lot of health care infections that may turn out to be chronic if discovered late. However, hand washing has been a common hygiene practice that has been improved over the years to help suppress healthcare-based illnesses (Li et al., 2019). Though it is an old method of infection control, hand hygiene can prevent Catheter-Associated Tract Infection (CAUTI). Therefore, the following proposal is an evidence-based strategic plan for The Woman’s Hospital of Texas. The proposal is an effective hand washing technique in preventing CAUTI.
CAUTI is a standard healthcare-based infection caused by indwelling catheters. Indwelling catheters are tubes inserted in the urethra that helps in draining urine from the bladder into a storage bag. These tubes are applied where one is undergoing surgery and is not in the capacity of waking up (Donovan et al., 2018). Since CAUTI and urinary tract infection (UTI) has the same symptoms, they are associated with cloudy urine containing blood, releasing a terrible stench when exposed. CAUTI is also associated with chills, vomiting, unexpected fatigue, and fever.
After assessing the hospital, it came to the attention that the hospital is affiliated to cultural practices that have been approached as potential challenges in integrating the nursing practice mediation (Blanchet et al., 2018). The hospital has diverse working schedules and shifts that would be hard to monitor the hand washing process’s progress. The proposal’s implementation is based on infection control practice whereby the medical practitioners in the hospital would decontaminate their hands on the following circumstances. Before touching a patient, the nurse is recommended to wash their hands. Nurses are to clean their hands before cleaning or executing an aseptic procedure.
The caregivers should wash their hands after fluids from the body are exposed, after touching a patient and coming into contact with the patient’s surroundings (Donovan et al., 2018). However, the compliance to these instances should be monitored by the hygiene resources and health practitioners and should be audited at frequent intervals to improve sustainability.
In this hand washing technique, nurses are expected to put the cleansing agent to wash hands into consideration. The cleansing method would vary depending on the nature of the care intervention provided; they are compatible with the practice at hand (Blanchet et al., 2018). A suitable mode of washing hands would rely on the accessibility of resources close to the spot of medical care. In this case, Alcohol-Based Hand Rub (ABHR) would exterminate transient pathogens making the hands socially clean before and after direct patient contact. Thus nurses should note ABHR’s availability during routine use.
Water and soap are to be used in the following instances when nurses may soil the hands with body fluids or discernibly contaminated. On the other hand, nurses may use the soap before and after handling patients with diarrheal or vomiting complications (Li et al., 2019).
The proposal adopts a three-stage phase of washing hands with soap and water, which include preparation, washing and rinsing, and drying. To prepare the hands for washing means wetting the hands under running water and smearing enough soap. Washing and rinsing involve rubbing hands in different angles and twists to allow the soap to interact with the dirt. Drying would be effective 30 to 45 seconds of drying before and after engagements. To implement these hand washing techniques, it would be essential to train and onboard new nurses. Nevertheless, it would be crucial to shift scheduling and effect of care (Li et al., 2019). In other cases, it would be necessary to increase communication with the patient on their status.
References
Blanchet Garneau, A., Browne, A. J., & Varcoe, C. (2018). Drawing on antiracist approaches toward a critical antidiscriminatory pedagogy for nursing. Nursing Inquiry, 25(1), e12211. Web.
Donovan, A. L., Aldrich, J. M., Gross, A. K., Barchas, D. M., Thornton, K. C., Schell-Chaple, H. M.,… & Lipshutz, A. K. (2018). Interprofessional care and teamwork in the ICU. Critical Care Medicine, 46(6), 980-990. Web.
Li, F., Song, M., Xu, L., Deng, B., Zhu, S., & Li, X. (2019). Risk factors for catheter‐associated urinary tract infection among hospitalized patients: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of observational studies. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(3), 517-527. Web.