I was very pleased to be asked to be a ‘face’ of The Christie and to raise awareness of ways to prevent healthcare associated infections - Wayne Gilbart

Wayne Gilbart, Lead infection control nurse

Wayne Gilbart

As an infection prevention and control nurse I was very pleased to be asked to write a blog about the important work infection control does.

I want to raise awareness of ways to prevent the transmission of healthcare-associated infections. These are infections that patients get when they are in hospital. Hand hygiene is considered the single most important way of preventing the spread of these infections. 

I work as part of a team at The Christie to look into cases of hospital infections, but also to prevent them happening. Infection prevention means ensuring that good hand hygiene takes place and working with staff to ensure they apply standard infection control precautions (including good hand hygiene and appropriate wearing of personal protective equipment when dealing with body fluids) to all patients and specific precautions to patients who have a known infection. 

When we talk about hand hygiene we mean washing your hands with soap and water or decontaminating them with alcohol-based hand rub. In most circumstances alcohol based hand rub is a great way of cleaning your hands and only takes about 15 seconds. We do ask staff to clean their hands with soap and water for infections like Clostridium difficile.

These infections can have a profound effect on a patient and can lead to additional treatments and a longer stay in hospital. Healthcare-associated infections cost the NHS over a billion pounds a year and cause profound distress to patients.

I am very proud to be a member of staff at The Christie where the issue of good hand hygiene is taken very seriously. Our infection control link workers carry out observational hand hygiene audits on a monthly basis and if there are any issues in a clinical area we will work with the team to ensure good hand hygiene standards are being maintained. 

We also promote good hand hygiene technique through the use of the Sure Wash system. My colleague Gary Thirkell describes this as ‘Wii Fit’ for your hands - it’s basically a way of teaching good hand hygiene technique. This is important because research has shown that people don’t always clean their hands as well as they should, missing out some bits. Since we’ve been using it we have had very positive feedback from staff, patients and relatives who have used the machine.

On 5th May, The Christie took part in World Hand Hygiene Day, a World Health organisation (WHO) initiative. This year we got staff to sign a pledge about hand hygiene with the tag line ‘We believe in clean care #safehands’. This helped to demonstrate to our staff, patients and relatives that we remain strong in our commitment to clean hands. Roger Spencer, our CEO, was the first person to sign the poster. 

The ‘Clean your hands’ poster is designed to be seen by everyone and I believe that everyone has a role to play in infection prevention and in promoting good hand hygiene. I regularly visit the wards and departments in the hospital to engage with staff about infection prevention and the posters have ensured that my face and the message of my team is being seen by members of staff that I have not met yet. 

I believe that the infection prevention team has a responsibility to hospital staff to be accessible to them for help and advice and to be excellent communicators, so this poster is a great way of promoting our service. I am very proud of my team - Gary Thirkell, Joanne Chambers and Kim Jackson who all do a great job in infection prevention at The Christie. 

As well as staff, it is important that patients and relatives clean their hands and for relatives to stay away if they are feeling unwell (for instance with flu-like symptoms) and I believe that this poster is a great way of engaging our patients and relatives in a conversation about hand hygiene and its importance. Patients and relatives have an important role in reminding staff about clean hands. I have talked to numerous patients and always emphasised the role they can play in hand hygiene.

I believe that we at The Christie have a responsibility to our patients, relatives and staff to ensure the highest standards of infection prevention (including hand hygiene) and patient safety. With the support of our director, Jackie Bird, this poster is just one of the ways the team is seeking to engage in the infection prevention agenda and to remind everybody to ‘Clean your hands’.