Preventing the Spread of Clostridium Difficile by Improving Hand Hygiene Compliance - Dissertation Example

A type of pathogenic bacteria, Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is “a gram-positive, spore-forming anaerobic bacillus” that causes nosocomial diarrhea and pseudomembranous colitis each time toxins A and B are released in the human intestinal tract (Giesemann, Egerer, Jank, & Aktories, 2008; Cookson, 2007; Hecht, 2003, p. 503). The only time C. difficile can be transformed into actively dangerous bacteria is when ingested by human beings. For this reason, Rebelo (2009) explained that it is a common misconception that C. difficile could directly infect other patients through body contact.
C. difficile could cause serious illness on the part of the elderly and immunocompromised patients (Rebelo, 2009). Since patients infected with C. difficile may experience mild to extremely severe diarrhea (Cookson, 2007), dehydrated patients who failed to seek medical treatment can be at risk of going through a life-threatening situation. Aiming to protect vulnerable patients from going through the health and physical consequences of C. difficile infection, this report will focus on examining the importance of hand hygiene.
Importance of Hand Hygiene
C. difficile traces can be found in the hospital environments particularly over the bed tables, side-curtains, scrub suits, lab gowns, computer keyboards, bedpans, furniture, linens, and stethoscope among others (Rebelo, 2009). Based on the research study of Selwyn (2000), the hands of health care professionals could collect as much as a thousand units/cm2 of micro-organisms. Given that C. difficile spores can easily stick on bare hands, health care professionals who are regularly working in a hospital environment can easily transfer C. difficile traces from one patient to another. To prevent the spread of C. difficile from being transferred from one patient to another, several studies revealed that the spread of C. difficile can be prevented through proper handwashing (Rebelo, 2009; Poutanen & Simor, 2004).
As one of the common and most effective techniques in preventing healthcare-associated infections (HCAI), effective hand hygiene should be practiced by health care professionals (Burnett, Lee, & Kydd, 2008; Poutanen & Simor, 2004). It means that health care professionals should make it a habit to wash their hands with anti-microbial soap for at least 10 to 15 minutes in order to lessen the chance that they will be transmitting C. difficile either among the other health care professionals or directly to the patients (Kampf & Hollingsworth, 2008; Larson et al., 2005; CDC, 2002). Since C. difficile spores can hide under the nails, health care professionals should make it a habit to use clean orangewood sticks whenever there is a need to perform surgical hand washing.
Since there is a high rate of non-compliance or sub-optimal compliance with regards to hand hygiene protocol using water and anti-bacterial soap (Burns, Sabetta, & Smardin, 2006), the research study of Knight et al. (2010) revealed that it is a good option to implement a hospital-wide alcohol-based hand rub (ABHR) in terms of increasing the rate of hand hygiene compliance from 5.3% (before the implementation) up to 19.6% (after the implementation) and reducing the number of C. difficile diarrhea cases from 4.96 per 10,000 patients (before implementation) down to 3.98 per 10,000 patients (after implementation). On the contrary, several studies revealed that the use of alcohol-based hand rub is effective in controlling MRSA or VRE but not spores like C. difficile (Chen, 2010; Kampf & Hollingsworth, 2008). Instead of promoting the use of alcohol-based hand rub in hospital settings, it is best to wash hands with plain soap to remove spores like C. difficile (Weber et al., 2003).
Conclusion and Recommendations
Proper handwashing using plain soap is effective in removing C. difficile that can be found in the hands of health care professionals. Read More