Hand hygiene in outpatient and home-based care and long-term care facilities: a guide to the application of the WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy and the “My Five Moments For Hand Hygiene” approach

Overview

The scope of this document is to address practical aspects related to the performance of routine hand hygiene while providing outpatient care. This document does not address surgical hand preparation (please refer to the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care).

The document is divided into two main sections: 1) a conceptual part aimed at providing the background evidence and the theoretical principles related to the “My five moments for hand hygiene” approach and the WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy, with adaptation to the reality of outpatient care settings; 2) a practical part with examples of the application of hand hygiene principles in situations occurring frequently in outpatient care settings. These practical examples are provided to help the reader to understand the need for hand hygiene in daily practice and to progressively adopt this approach during health-care delivery in real life situations. Infection control leaders at the national level and professionals at the facility level should facilitate the understanding and the adoption of these concepts by front-line health-care workers (HCWs). This includes estimating risks, establishing priorities and taking into account the available resources and most frequent procedures undertaken locally. Additional practical tools for evaluation, education, and learning targeted at health-care providers in outpatient care settings are currently under development by WHO and should be used in association with this guidance document.

Japanese version published in electronic format only by Niigata Prefectural Muikamachi Hospital.