Yes you can audit in single rooms, it may take a little longer than multi-bed rooms, but is certainly possible.  You must ensure you position yourself to be able to see all movement into and out of that room, the hand hygiene products and the care being given to the patient .

Healthcare workers with artificial nails are more likely than those with natural nails to harbour gram-negative pathogens on their fingertips. The consensus recommendations from the World Health Organisation are that healthcare workers do not wear artificial fingernails or extenders when having direct contact with patients and natural nails should be kept short (< 0.5cm long).

All promotional materials released by HHA are available on our website HERE.

All posters are able to be downloaded and printed locally from the HHA website. HHA do not have any hard copies to post on request.

Your hand hygiene lead should communicate clearly with each auditor the expected number of moments to audit, per person or per area.

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Please see the instructions on this page

Any such targets should first be realistic and attainable, in view of the long-term efforts required to bring about improvements in hand hygiene behaviour.  Aiming for complete compliance in the short term would obviously be difficult to achieve in facilities where initial compliance rate may be less than 40%.

What should be aimed for is the establishment of a baseline, and a steady, sustainable, month by month, year on year improvement.

Patients and visitors should be encouraged to perform hand hygiene on:

entry to a healthcare facility
entry to a ward
prior to visiting a patient
at mealtimes

Having Alcohol-based handrub available in high traffic areas eg. foyers, entrances to wards, with signage about appropriate use with help encourage this.

If relatives and carers are helping to nurse a patient they should be shown how and when to clean their hands during a sequence of care. However, they are unlikely to touch other patients in a similar way so are unlikely to transfer infection to other patients.

If you are trained to assist in an emergency situation, put your auditing equipment away and assist.  If you are not trained to assist, step aside and leave your auditing for another time, or move to another area to audit.  Patient safety always comes first.

All promotional materials can be found here.

Patients can transfer pathogens from one site on their body to another. If patients are having contact with their wound or the insertion site of a device, hand hygiene should be encouraged. In the same way visitors having contact with the patient should perform hand hygiene. In instances where visitors are likely to have physical contact with more than one patient, then hand hygiene should be performed before and after touching a patient, and after body fluid exposure (see The 5 Moments for further details).

The hand hygiene auditor role differs between organisations, depending on the experience and knowldege of the individual auditor. However, HHA strongly recommend that auditors do not just audit, but are an integral part of the hand hygiene team. Suggested roles for an "auditor" are:

• Auditing
• Education
• Promotion
• Assist with data review and planning of improvement strategies based on audit results

Artificial, painted and chipped nails should not be worn in clinical areas as they can harbour microorganisms and are linked with outbreaks of infections.

Please note: This includes all types of nail coverings e.g. Shellac, Gel, SNS etc.

HHA have set up automatic user tidy up rules in the Compliance Database to best manage the volume of users in our system.

If you meet either of the following criteria, then your login will be deleted, or your auditor role removed.

The "role" of auditor will be removed if you:

• Have old session data (collected > 1.5 years ago) AND
• Username was created >1yr ago AND
• Your last log in was >1.5 years ago OR you have never logged in 

Your login will be deleted if you:

• Have NO data AND 
• Username was created >1yr ago AND 
• Your last log in >1.5 years ago OR you have never logged in

If you have been affected by this, please contact your hand hygiene lead for your organisation for assistance.

All HHA materials are avaliable electronically for individuals to download, display, print and reproduce in unaltered form only (retaining this notice, and any headers and footers) for personal, non-commercial use or for use within your organisation. You may distribute any copies of downloaded material in unaltered, complete form only. All other rights are reserved.

If the resources are modified in any way, the Hand Hygiene Australia logo should not be used. Instead, Hand Hygiene Australia should be acknowledged as the original source, and the resource referenced appropriately.