What is the importance of hand hygiene in infection control?

Hands that are unclean can easily pass along infectious agents through a process known as cross-contamination. In health care, cross-contamination usually involves a transfer of pathogens resulting from a health care worker failing to use proper hand hygiene techniques.

Hand hygiene represents one of the simplest ways that health care workers can prevent the spread of health care-associated infections. Infectious agents are most often passed from one patient to another via the hands of a health care worker when:

• Organisms that are present on the infected patient’s skin, or that have been shed onto inanimate objects in close proximity to the patient, are transferred to the hands of a health care worker;
• Organisms are robust enough to survive for at least several minutes on the hands of the health care workers;
• Hand hygiene procedures on the part of the health care worker are inadequate; and
• The contaminated hands of the health care worker come into direct contact with another patient or with an inanimate object that the patient will contact.

Preventing cross-contamination involves two distinct options for maintaining proper hand hygiene:

• Washing hands with soap and water, which cleans the hands by removing germs without killing the germs; or
• Using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer, which kills the germs that are on the hands.