I’m sure it was not only my mother who encouraged us to finish our dinner by saying, “Eat your food. Children in Africa are starving.” We were never sure how clearing our plates would help those poor children across the world. We wondered, Were we supposed to feel guilt for not eating? Shouldn’t we feel guilt for eating? Wouldn’t it have been more helpful to not finish, and send the leftovers to them? Only as a parent myself now do I understand---be grateful for what you have, for others do not have so much. Show your gratitude by using what’s been given to you.
Recently, the World Health Organization celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Global Hand Hygiene Initiative. While following all the social media promotions, I was reminded of the WHO’s Self-Assessment Tool for Hand Hygiene. It’s not that I forget about the WHO, but I’ll admit that I more readily retrieve CDC documents when looking for a resource.
If you have not seen it, or not in a while, the WHO HH document is an assessment tool of your HH program's needs. It’s divided into domains like systems change, education, etc, and you work through the questions, scoring your HH program on whether or not it satisfies each item. At the end, you have a score for each domain, which you use to guide your program improvements. Areas with the lowest score need the most attention. WHO provides resources for improving each domain, including slide sets for training coordinators and observers, tools for soap consumption, posters, patient engagement materials, template letters to management requesting support, and more.
I think I had become overconfident in my ability to understand and implement all the components of a successful HH program. Faced for the first time in my ICP career with poor HH compliance numbers at a new facility, reviewing this tool refocused me on identifying exactly where the problem is--not just, “Nobody washes their hands here.” From this moment on, I promise, hand over heart, to pull out the WHO tool at each new job I have.
But there was more to it. What I used to, perhaps, brush off as a document for poor countries, was so much more. It was suddenly a very unpleasant reminder of challenges faced by others doing my job without the resources. Not resources like, “I need an admin assistant to help with meeting minutes,” but real resources, like no hand sanitizer or clean running water.
The questions posed by the WHO document include such things as whether or not sanitizer is budgeted for, is there clean water and sinks, and if there is a qualified person to train others. Do you have times where there just isn’t any more money for sanitizer or soap? Me neither.
In the US and Canada, we call this time of year the season of Thanksgiving--a moment where we are grateful for what we have, and recognition that many have much less. And while cleaning our hands in rich countries does not help others around the world, perhaps a new approach to the apathy about hand hygiene compliance is to make staff aware of those who have less. We are fortunate to have all the resources we need. We need to be using them. We don’t do it out of guilt, but out of gratitude.
Alas, I have become my mother.
