In an earnest effort to remove barriers to hand hygiene and improve the abysmal national hand hygiene rate of 5%, TJC just released a new checklist that must be filled out for each and every staff member for each opportunity for hand hygiene. Gomerblog got a sneak peak of this checklist that will be released later this year:
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Wash your damn hands.
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Grab a pen. Any pen will do. It can even be the pen on a patient’s bedside table touching a urinal full of ESBL-contaminated urine.
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Lean on the nurses’ station counter with your hands for support while the ward clerk fetches a copy of this checklist for you. Any nurses’ station counter will do, so now you have probably have C. diff on your hands.
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Use ESBL and C. diff contaminated pen to check the box that says you washed your hands. Sign, date, and time bottom of the form.
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Find an RN to witness your form signature. If you can’t find an RN because they are too busy with something called “patient care” to waste time on yet another form, find a room with a closed door and a “contact precautions” sign outside because you can probably find an RN in there wearing a funny gown who has plenty of time to sign your form.
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Have RN sign the form. Don’t waste their time by making them take their CRE- contaminated bloody gloves off. Shake their hand to thank them.
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Find an MD to witness your form signature. If you can’t find an MD, burst into an OR. There is always an MD in an OR. Shake their Group-A-Strep-contaminated-sterile-gloved-hand with your C. diff, CRE, and ESBL contaminated hand to thank them for their generosity.
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Congratulations! Now you have completed the hand hygiene verification checklist and can commence central line dressing change on your neutropenic patient.
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File checklist in dirty utility room until it is decontaminated and safe to handle.
