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point of care title

The cleanyourhands campaign promotes the good hand hygiene at the ‘point of care’. The point of care represents the time and place at which there is the highest likelihood of transmission of infection via healthcare staff whose hands act as mediators in the transfer of microbes.

 

Patient Zone   

The concept of the Five Moments is that the patient and their immediate environment becomes what is defined as the ‘patient zone’.


This zone can differ according to where the patient is being treated and needs to be agreed by the staff working within that environment.

 

Staff need to clean their hands when they enter this ‘zone’ and when they leave.  Staff can work within this zone without having to clean their hands again unless they are undertaking a clean/aseptic task or may have direct hand contact with body fluids.

 

Should staff enter the patient zone and touch items that have been designated to be within the zone without touching the patient, then they need to clean their hands after this contact. This avoids the risk of transferring any microbes from this environment into another patient’s zone.

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