Clinical Center hosts first hand hygiene day

Episode # 100
Uploaded: June 8, 2012
Running Time: 1:58

CROWN: From the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, this is CLINICAL CENTER RADIO.

Fact or fiction? Learning about hand hygiene can actually be a lot of fun. Definitely a fact!

NIH Clinical Center staff, patients, and visitors came out by the dozens to spin the wheel o'fun, try out the magic GloGerm, and vote for their favorite poster at the hospital's first-ever I Heart Hand Hygiene Day.

Laura Lee, Clinical Center Patient Safety and Clinical Quality:

LEE: Today we are celebrating the first – and hopefully annual – Hand Hygiene Awareness day. Hand hygiene is a critical patient safety issue here at the Clinical Center as well as other hospitals all over the world and the United States, especially here at the Clinical Center where we have so many immuno-compromised patients. It is probably the single-most important thing we can do as health care providers as well as patients to keep ourselves as well as our partners who are our patients here at the Clinical Center.

CROWN: Lee says the Clinical Center emphasizes the use of hand sanitizer, which can be found throughout the hospital. Use two pumps and rub for 20 seconds. Research nurse Amina Oughourli says she thought she knew all about hand hygiene, but the event gave her new insight.

OUGHOURLI: It's very interesting. I did the dark light simulation with the dirt and it was pretty gruesome, so I'm going to be washing my hands pretty vigilantly – even more so than I was before.

CROWN: She'll also be passing on the tips to her colleagues.

OUGHOURLI: I'll be telling them to make sure they use two pumps of the hand sanitizer and rub for twenty seconds.

CROWN: From America's Clinical Research Hospital, this has been CLINICAL CENTER RADIO. In Bethesda, Maryland, I'm Ellen Crown, at the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

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