RESIST is a brand for a number of hand hygiene and infection prevention and control initiatives under the HSE Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control programme (AMRIC). One of these initiatives is a rollout of the RESIST hand hygiene awareness programme.
The programme promotes a combination of hand hygiene training with standardised national training materials. Hand hygiene has been at the forefront of all of the initiatives that the HSE has been implementing to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The HSE is now looking to rollout RESIST, to refresh its hand hygiene messages and to keep promoting the importance of clean hands.
The Acting Director of Nursing at Gorey District Hospital Michelle Stokes says:
“Cleaning your hands properly, at the correct time, when delivering care to our service users, is the most effective way to stop the spread of many infections including COVID-19. When healthcare workers like doctors, nurses and carers, keep their hands clean, they help prevent the spread of serious healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs). These are infections that can happen in any healthcare service. Gorey District hospital is always looking to improve our standards. The RESIST programme will help us to do that and we are delighted to have been selected to be part of the rollout in HSE Older Persons Services.”
“The new hand hygiene awareness programme is aimed at all healthcare workers and public utilising the service. Some infections found in healthcare facilities can be very serious. We can all help stop the spread of these infections by making sure that our staff, service users and visitors clean their hands. We want our staff to continue their hand hygiene training and join the Superbug Resistance. We have always implemented good hand hygiene practices in Gorey District Hospital, but this new programme will help us to refresh and energise our hand hygiene approach.”
The public can also play a big part in reducing the spread of infection. There are things you can do to protect yourself from picking up an infection or superbug:
· Clean your hands regularly and use the alcohol gel available
· It’s OK to remind staff to clean their hands
· It’s OK to tell a staff member if you see anything that is not clean
