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Experts Tackle the Tough Issues in Hand Hygiene
By Kelly M. Pyrek
At a recent Town Hall presentation,“ Back to Basics: Reinforcing Hand Hygiene & Infection Prevention Fundamentals,” hosted by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America( SHEA), a panel of experts discussed key trends in hand hygiene compliance.
Emily Sickbert-Bennett, PhD, CIC, director of infection prevention at UNC Health, reminded attendees that“ Hand hygiene is a foundation for everything that we do in infection prevention.”
She shared that polling revealed the primary goal related to hand hygiene is simply“ getting staff to comply, as well as our patients and visitors if we can be so lucky to do it.” She continued,“ If hand hygiene is foundational and we just need people to do it, then what makes it so hard?”
Sickbert-Bennett addressed three important aspects of hand hygiene that complicate compliance, including fingernails, gloves and monitoring.
She emphasized that hand hygiene begins with the healthy hands of healthcare personnel being free from pathogenic transient or resident flora, redness, cracks, or wounds, and having short, natural fingernails.“ What’ s clear from the literature is that hand hygiene really does begin with having healthy hands. There’ s a lot of data that shows when we have red, cracked hands with wounds on them, we have higher microbial loads which can threaten our skin integrity.”
12 • www. healthcarehygienemagazine. com • sept-oct 2025