Effective hand hygiene at the point of care prevents transmission of infectious microorganisms during healthcare delivery and saves lives. According to the World Health Organization “To be effective, hand hygiene should be performed when it is needed, and in the most effective way at the point of care¹.”

At Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital, we monitor to ensure that our staff practice effective hand hygiene i.e., they carry out hand hygiene when required, using the right technique, and using the right product. We calculate hand-hygiene compliance as the number of observations where necessary hand-hygiene was practiced divided by the total number of observations where hand hygiene was needed.

As indicated in the graph below, Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital consistently maintained a high level of hand hygiene compliance against benchmark of 75% (DiDiodato, Volume 40, issue 4, 2012). We believe that this consistent hand hygiene practice across our network of facilities makes a big contribution to keeping patients, their families and staff free from infections