Hand hygiene as standard practice: do the rules apply to all healthcare professionals?

摘要

The importance of healthcare professionals performing hand hygiene consistently was first demonstrated by Ignaz Semmelweis1 in the 1840s. After concluding that puerperal fever was contagious, he directed that all medical students wash their hands with chlorinated lime prior to examining patients. Despite minimizing the rate of maternal death from 12 to 1, Dr Semmelweis' hand-washing practices encountered opposition from various hospital and medical leaders.1 One hundred sixty years later, incidences of failure to protect patients from harm simply by performing hand hygiene continue.