Healthcare workers must always perform hand hygiene before patient contact to prevent the transfer of harmful pathogens. This crucial step is the first line of defense in safeguarding patients and reducing the risk of HAIs, ensuring a safer environment for all.

1. Before Touching a Patient
   Healthcare workers must always perform hand hygiene before patient contact to prevent the transfer of pathogens. This is vital before any patient care activity.
2. Before Clean/Aseptic Procedures
   Hand hygiene is crucial before every patient care procedure to stop the transfer of pathogens from the environment to the patient, especially before an aseptic task like placing or handling invasive medical devices.
3. After a Procedure or Body Fluid Exposure Risk
   Healthcare workers should perform hand hygiene after completing any patient care that is invasive or has a risk of contamination due to exposure to blood or body fluids.
4. After Touching a Patient
   Hand hygiene is important every time after touching a patient to protect oneself and the environment. This helps prevent the spread of germs to other patients and surfaces within the healthcare facility.
5. After Touching a Patient’s Surroundings
   Anything around the patient is susceptible to contamination by microorganisms. Therefore, healthcare workers should perform hand hygiene after touching any item in and around the patient.

Adhering to these five moments is fundamental to patient safety. Explore how the Ecolab Hand Hygiene Program provides a comprehensive solution to support your team’s compliance efforts.

In busy healthcare settings with hundreds of patients, these hand hygiene moments occur constantly. To save time without compromising safety, alcohol-based hand sanitizers are effective for most situations—though hands should always be washed with soap and water when visibly soiled.

At Ecolab, we recognize that hand hygiene  is one of the most critical defenses against HAIs. That’s why we offer a hand hygiene program for healthcare facilities to accurately monitor hand hygiene individually.

Our hand hygiene compliance monitoring systems delivers real-time insights and actionable guidance to improve hand hygiene performance, drive accountability, and support safer environments and protect what’s vital.