Abstract

  Health Care Related Infections associated with the hands of health professionals has shown high rates of morbidity and mortality as a public health problem. The objective was to synthesize information about the hands of health professionals as a vehicle for the contamination of microorganisms that affect HAIs in hospitalized patients, highlighting risk factors, which etiological agents, analysis of low knowledge and adherence, in addition to analyzing improvement strategies. Articles with the descriptors were searched: Hand Hygiene; Hand Sanitizers; Health Care Associated Infections; Healthcare Workers; Infectious Disease Transmission, Professional-to-Patient., In the databases and virtual libraries: Scielo, Google scholar, Pubmed, Science direct, Web of Science and Brazilian database Periódico Capes, in the last 5 years. In total, 11,939 articles were found, after exclusion criteria 26 were used to compose the review. Among the relevant risk factors are sepsis, pneumonia, gastrointestinal and urinary tract infections, as well as surgical site infections associated with the hands of professionals. Low knowledge and lack of adherence are related to high workload associated with inadequate resource facilities and training strategies and ineffective hand hygiene assessment. The etiologic agents most frequently detected were Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus coagulase-negative, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Enterococcus spp, Acinetobacter baumannii and Klebsiella spp. Practices such as encouraging the training of professionals responsible for the prevention and control of HAIs in hospitals, surveillance with physical and electronic feedback on the correct execution of hand hygiene, has proven to be effective strategies.

Keywords: Hand Hygiene; Hand Sanitizers; Health Care Associated Infections; Healthcare Workers; Infectious Disease Transmission; Professional-to-Patient

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Citation

Citation: Denise Von Dolinger de Brito Röder.,et al. “Hands of Health Care Professionals as a Vehicle for the Transmission of Hospital Pathogens". Acta Scientific Paediatrics 4.2 (2021): 41-46.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Denise Von Dolinger de Brito Röder.,et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.