Newsroom The World Health Organization (WHO) have developed the 'Five Moments' for hand hygiene, defining the key points for healthcare workers to clean their hands. The WHO and the NPSA have developed some posters and resources to help illustrate these moments for both acute and community care settings.
There are posters/handouts provided for both acute and community trusts with the patient shown in both a bed and a chair covering:
Five moments - patient in bed
Five moments - patient in bed
Five moments - patient in chair
There are also:
PowerPoint slides
The slides are provided both as single
slides of the five moments and a series of slides with descriptions of when and
why these moments are important.
Five moments single slide - patient
in bed
Five moments with descriptions -
patient in bed
Five moments single slide - patient
in chair
Five moments with descriptions -
patient in chair
About the campaign:
The cleanyourhands campaign is a national initiative in England and Wales to improve the hand hygiene of healthcare workers and help reduce the spread of preventable healthcare associated infections.
The campaign is in its third year in NHS acute hospitals, where independent evaluation shows that the campaign remains a top priority for most trusts and has achieved a two and a half fold increase in alcohol hand rub and soap usage. The campaign is also now being extended to include other NHS care settings.
The campaign uses a multimodal approach to educate, prompt and enable healthcare workers to clean their hands at the right time, every time. Materials are free of charge to NHS organisations, although alcohol hand rubs are purchased locally.
An assessment undertaken on behalf by the Department of Health, found the campaign to be cost effective, even if the reductions in healthcare associated infection rates were as low as 0.1%.
