Five moments for hand hygiene

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WHO Guidelines promote the concept of five moments for hand hygiene in healthcare institutions. The concept is based on five principal moments of hand hygiene as standard precaution, that has to be done in every patient and in every circumstance. The concept is simple to understand and simple to teach.

These five moments are:

  1. before touching a patient
  2. before a clean/aseptic procedure
  3. after body fluid exposure risk
  4. after touching a patient
  5. after touching patient's surroundings

At least saying there are some issues somewhere and or referring to the community approach they have now published where it is a little modified.

The Government of Ontario, Canada, has combined patient and environment contact, so they have four moments:

  1. before initial patient/patient environment contact
  2. before aseptic procedure
  3. after body fluid exposure risk
  4. after patient/patient environment contact

In simple situations, all standard precautions and hand hygiene indications (see above) can be put into these five moments. The most important addition is performing hand hygiene before and after using gloves. In some more complex situations, especially if there is a staff shortage, it is necessary to use medical (common sense) judgment and perform hand hygiene based on actual risk assessment. 


- Link to IC/HH Core competencies:  Area 4 Infection control activities: Domain Elaborating infection control intervention ICA 1-2

References

Contributors

  • Vladimir Prikazsky
  • Smilja Kalenic
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Contributors