Planned Change in a Department or Unit

Planned change in a department or unit
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Planned change in a department or unit
Identified issue: poor adherence to hand hygiene protocol
The selected healthcare organization is Joseph Brant Hospital. At the moment, the problems, inefficiencies and critical issues in a nursing area in this healthcare organization is failure of nurses to maintain proper hand hygiene. Proper hand hygiene is a very significant action that nursing staff members can take in order to minimize the spread of hospital acquired infections. Hand hygiene is understood as performing hand washing, alcohol-based handrub, antiseptic handwash, as well as surgical hand hygiene/antisepsis (Barrett & Randle, 2009). Nursing staff members need to wash their hands using water and soap whenever their hands are visibly unclean, soiled or contaminated and utilize alcohol-based handrub whenever their hands are not visibly soiled in order to decrease bacterial counts.
Generally, adherence of nurses to the recommended procedures of hand hygiene is poor and unsatisfactory. On average, the rate of adherence is roughly 40 percent (Gould, 2011). The common reasons that contribute to poor adherence with hand hygiene among nurses include the following: inadequate time to wash hands or being very busy, agents used for washing hands cause dryness and irritation, and that paper towels and soap are lacking. Other reasons are overcrowding or understaffing, insufficient time, sinks for hand washing are inconveniently located, needs of patients taking priority, and low likelihood of acquiring infections from the patients (Barrett & Randle, 2009). In addition, disagreement with the recommendations, forgetfulness, and lack of knowledge of the protocols/guidelines are also factors that nurses have reported as contributing to poor adherence with hand hygiene. These various factors negatively impact the adherence of nurses with the recommended practices.
Change to address the issue
To address the issue, the proposed change is to promote hand washing and encouraging nursing staffs to perform hand hygiene consistently. As part of the change, three strategies would be utilized in promoting hand washing and effective infection control practices throughout the department. These are (i) education strategy – this will promote how to and why of washing hands correctly. Posters for promoting hand hygiene would be put in areas that are visible in order to remind the nurses to practice correct hand hygiene. Hospital infection control teams would be invited to teach the nurses about the significance of infection control and proper hand hygiene. Instructional hand washing videos can also be played on TVs in the department (Barrett & Randle, 2009). (ii) Intervention strategies – these would be aimed at promoting clean hands within the hospital environment. Automatic sinks would be put near the exit of each room, and alcohol-based hand rubs would be placed in all patient rooms and nurse workstations to increase the chances of nurse washing hands between patients. (iii) Evaluation tools – these would be utilized in monitoring the handwashing practice (Grant et al., 2010).
How change would align with the organization...