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Announcer: Ruth Morrison is making a difference in patient
every time she cleans her hands. Ruth is a patient porter at
Grand River Hospital.
She's helping to reduce the spread of germs by focusing on something
our parents taught us to do
Ruth: Well you're working in so many common areas of the hospital
all throughout the hospital, you're touching elevators that numerous people
have touched
and also you're doing a lot of patient care, hands-on patient care
So you want to be as diligent as possible not to spread germs, that's our goal.
Announcer: Ruth isn't working alone. hand hygiene is serious business throughout the hospital.
and a concerted effort to improve hand hygiene is paying off.
Margie: in 2009 the Ministry of Health asked all hospitals in Ontario
compliance
auditing for hand hygiene, and we did
and we found ourselves to be at 30 percent compliance which was very
surprising to us.
Since then, we've put a lot of work and effort into increasing hand hygiene
compliance
and we're well over 90 percent now of compliance for
all of our staff and physicians and volunteers
performing hand hygiene before and after all contacts with patient.
Announcer: signs of hand hygiene are everywhere at Grand River Hospital
More than 3,000 hand sanitizer dispensers dot the walls around GRH
Those stations make it easy for everyone to clean their hands.
That's important because clean hands mean safer care.
Dr. Ciccotelli: by cleaning our hands appropriately with alcohol based hand gel or soap and water
we can help reduce the spread of dangerous infectious organisms
here in hospital. So certainly as part of wanting to provide a very safe patient
care environment, all our staff has taken this on as a mission
to make sure that our rates in our hand hygiene is the best it can be
Announcer: GRH's next step will be to encourage all patients and members of
the public for their help
to make sure their hands are clean too. Margie: we know that in the community and
everywhere, we're in contact with germs.
So when people come into hospital we want them to have clean hands so that
they're not
adding germs or the potential for infection to our patients who are already
vulnerable.
Everyone participating can make a difference in protecting and providing a
safe environment
for patients and everyone. Ruth: there's not an area in the hospital where
hand sanitizer
or gel is not available or numerous sinks. So please wash your hands as soon
as you enter,
in between, before you're having contact
from even Tim Hortons to a patient, and
especially if you're going into a patient's room.