Thousands Of Elderly People In The Aged Care And Health Sector Become Extremely Ill: Critical Review Of Audits In Aged Care Essay, USA, Australia

INTRODUCTION

Thousands of elderly people in the Aged Care and Health Sector become extremely ill or even pass away every day in Australia from infections while receiving health care.  This essay will endeavor to critically review the use of audits with the aged care, the importance of hand hygiene, and the use of alcohol sanitizers by Health care workers (HCW) The HCW’s are educated on the 5 Moments for Hand Hygiene that has been designed to minimize the risk of transmission of microorganisms between healthcare worker, the patient, and the environment.

1. The 5 moments of hand hygiene as put forward by the (World Health Organisation. 2019) are

2. Before making contact any contact with the patient.

3. Before completing any hygiene or Activities of Daily Living (ADL’s).

4. Before and after a procedure that is an exposure risk to body fluid by the staff member.

5. Complete hand hygiene when leaving the patient’s room.

Good hand hygiene is one of the most effective means of reducing Healthcare related infection. However auditing compliance by HCW with recommended techniques and frequencies when audited remains low (Department of Health, & Human Services. 2020).  These issues may be due to time restraints, skin integrity, physical and emotional recourses’ and the absence of experienced staff as role models within the facility, which have been identified as barriers to compliance with completing hand hygiene. (Department of Health & Human Services, 2020).  Although there has been a vast improvement in compliance by HCW hand hygiene with the increased availability of hand sanitizers, in the hallway and patient bedrooms, long with regular education sessions, and observation auditing. (Bendigo Health 2020).

Strategies

The purpose of education by the ICP champions on hand hygiene is to provide a clear direction on procedures to be followed when completing this task. Observational audits are to be completed three times a year and the target for compliance is 80% this is set by the HHA in 2018. There is no limit on the number of times a single HCW can be observed, each audit session should be a minimum of 20 min, more than one session is often required to achieve the required numbers of observations needed for the audit. Alternative sessions are often needed to be undertaken at different times and dates to complete scheduled audits.