Why washing your hands makes us healthier and happier!

As nurses, all of us understand how necessary hand washing is. We understand that germs can spread disease and that hand hygiene may also help protect against them. Despite this, 78 percent of all health care staff have recently been tested test presented on the Association of Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) conference didn’t meet the standards set out within the World Health Organization’s guidelines for reducing the chance of spreading infection to patients. So why are there so many sloths?

Perhaps sinks and hand sanitizer dispensers should not all the time in essentially the most convenient locations in hospitals. And in the event that they are conveniently situated, they might not all the time contain soap or disinfectant gel. Or possibly we’re just rushing from one emergency or critical situation to the following and taking the time to stop and wash our hands recurrently is not a priority. Or just because under the identical circumstances we simply forget.

It seems so obvious, and yet we didn’t all the time understand how necessary hand washing was. In 1847, a health care provider working at a maternity hospital in Vienna, which had two separate clinics, one run by doctors and the opposite by midwives, discovered that for babies born to doctors, the mortality rate for babies born to midwives was almost thrice higher than for babies born to midwives born by midwives. The reason was that doctors arriving on the hospital for delivery had just finished their work within the autopsy ward, thus infecting the mother and baby with quite a few germs transferred from deceased patients. When doctors were advised to scrub their hands with an antiseptic solution before delivery, the death rate dropped dramatically.

Solutions promoting more frequent hand washing may be utilized in many hospitals. For some people, implementing one among several modern, automated hand hygiene monitoring devices, akin to direct commentary systems with video monitoring, electronic dispenser counters and automatic hand hygiene monitoring networks, could also be effective for some people. And while there may be empirical evidence that all these monitoring systems are effective, given the budget constraints that many hospitals face, implementing them could also be prohibitively expensive and due to this fact not an option.

While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, many hospitals have taken steps to further encourage handwashing by investing in alcohol-based hand rub solutions (way more efficient in reducing hand contamination than antiseptic soaps), each by installing wall-mounted dispensers and by providing individual containers for every healthcare employee. Changing hospital-wide messages from “Wash your hands to protect yourself” to “Wash your hands to protect yourself” could also be helpful, together with peer pressure and private incentives akin to drawings of free monthly manicures (yes, everyone knows the impact that constant hand washing can have an effect on our skin and nails).
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It’s clear that handwashing keeps us healthy, but what goes unnoticed is the extra, subtle psychological effect that handwashing has on all of us. The Dalai Lama tells us, “As human beings, we all want to be happy and free from unhappiness,” and we have now learned that the important thing to happiness is inner peace. What when you could achieve inner peace and happiness through the best on a regular basis activities – like washing your hands?

AdditionallyDyfrom the University of Cologne in Germany examined how the act of washing our hands can positively impact us after a foul experience or stressful event, while also making us more optimistic after a recent failure. Previous research from the University of Michigan has also shown that handwashing may be physically and emotionally cleansing, suggesting that this straightforward act could make us feel more comfortable in regards to the decisions and actions we make.

Personally, once I finish training on the gym, the very first thing I do is wash my hands. Somehow, this straightforward hand-washing ritual provides a way of finality and success. However, the training ritual is way more complex (at the least for me).

The act of looking for purity has two different meanings for us humans. The first is the apparent advantages related to physical hygiene. The second one is more psychological. Psychological research has shown that the easy act of washing your hands can allow you to feel more optimistic, less self-doubt, and even slightly morally superior – as “clean” people have been found to be more judgmental of other people. it’s bad behavior. Think Lady Macbeth.

So possibly now, as we make an effort to scrub our hands for the hundredth time, remembering the Nightingale Pledge and our responsibility to guard the security of our patients, we may additionally reflect on our own self-improvement goals, including eating healthier, attempting to exercise more, and being kinder to others and our planet, knowing that this straightforward act of washing your hands could be a more logical path to happiness and inner peace. Or at the least we will tell ourselves so

Bibliography:
Brun-Buisson, C., Girou, E., Legrand, P., Loyeau, S., Oppein, F., (2002, August 17). Effectiveness
rubbing hands with an alcohol-based solution compared with standard handwashing with antiseptic soap: a randomized clinical trial. Source: NCBI, U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC117885/

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Johnson, N., Niles, M. (2016, June 2). The Hawthorne effect in hand hygiene compliance rates.
Retrieved from AJIS
http://www.ajijournal.org/article/S0196-6553(16)30209-7/pdf

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Kaspar, K. (2012, April 10). Washing your hands after failure increases optimism, but makes the long run tougher
Efficiency.
Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550612443267#articleCitationDownloadContainer
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Psyblog (n.d.). 6 purely psychological effects of washing your hands. Downloaded from
http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/10/6-purely-psychological-effects-of-washing-your-hands.php

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