By Jennifer L.W. Fink, RN, BSN “This? This is a thing for nurses?” TikTokker @TheNurseErica steps aside, revealing an electronic hand hygiene system. Her skepticism and sarcasm are clearly on display. And you know what? I don’t blame her. Long-...
You know how important your Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade is to your institution’s reputation and functioning. And you know that the Leapfrog Hand Hygiene Survey contributes to your facility’s safety grade. You probably also know that Leapfrog h...
“Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.” ― Joseph Wood Krutch, American author Infection preventionists have a vitally important job: they’re charged with preventing the spread of infe...
Weighing a chicken doesn’t make it fatter. That piece of wisdom comes from William Bornstein, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Quality and Patient Safety Officer for Emory Healthcare. It might seem strange for a medical doctor to “weigh i...
Patient safety systems must be able to withstand serious threats to patient safety. If such systems whither when confronted with staff shortages, supply chain disruptions, or infectious diseases, they cannot be considered patient safety systems. A sy...
Some hospitals have asked The Leapfrog Group to relax its hand hygiene standards, says Leah Binder, Leapfrog’s president and CEO, according to a January 28, 2022 Becker’s Hospital Review article. That’s not going to happen. Becker’s Hos...
No change initiative will be successful without staff buy-in. It doesn’t matter how inspired, impactful, or well-researched the initiative is. A hand hygiene initiative that’s projected to significantly decrease healthcare-associated infections (...
Nurses have no patience for hand hygiene systems that interfere with their clinical workload. Given the choice between missing hand hygiene but performing timely, necessary care or diligently performing hand hygiene but missing the opportunity to pro...
Most healthcare technologies use alarms to signal a need to take action. But busy healthcare providers, overwhelmed by the ubiquity of alarms in clinical settings, quickly learn to adjust their attention and often ignore the alarms. Alarm fatig...
You know that hand hygiene decreases the risk of infection. Your staff knows that as well. And yet, if your facility is like most, your hand hygiene rates remain lower than you’d like. As noted in a 2020 article in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, r...