Essay on Hand Hygiene: Gastro Ward

The course of action that ensures and helps give an assurance to the healthcare service users and patients the appropriate treatment that is from the right person and above all, in the right manner, is known as the clinical audit. The clinical audit does this by examining the services and the care that is provided by the evidence that is based on the standards. It then tightens the gap between the best practice and the existing practice. Additionally, the clinical audit is what provides the structure that should be followed in order to improve the quality of patients in a systematic and a planned way. On the other hand, the clinical governance is a kind of a system that obligates all the NHS organizations to always preserve high standards of care and continuously improve quality of services among patients. This should be so by creating an environment that is excellent for clinical care to flourish.

Gastro ward uses hand hygiene as its audit tool. Hand hygiene has remained a vital tool in the gastro ward as it prevents a lot of harmful consequences. For instance, it leads to delivery of quality healthcare prevention and control of infection among patients in the gastro ward. Having in mind that healthcare-associated infections have become common in the healthcare sectors, hand hygiene observation tool is playing an important role in the gastro ward because it helps to reduce risks of harm among patients, the staffs, and visitors. Consequently, this reduces the costs that are associated with infections that are preventable.

To achieve the above, the gastro healthcare observes the hand hygiene audit tool using five moments. The moments include before touching the patient, before the aseptic procedure, after body fluid exposure risk, after touching the patient, and after touching patient surroundings. By these moments, staffs in the gastro ward observe high levels of hand hygiene.

Hand hygiene audit tool relates much to the audit cycle and the clinical governance within the NHS gastro ward. This is much seen through learning culture, research and development culture, reliable and accurate data, well-managed resources and services, coherent team, meaningful involvement of public and patients, health gains, confidentiality, evidence-based practice and policy, health promotion, core requirements, audit and evaluation, and risk management.

The hand hygiene audit is effective and can be used to optimize clinical effectiveness. For instance, the clinical audit is at many times, used to measure the conformity with standards with the clinical practice. Since the hand hygiene is simple, effective and less inexpensive in providing the care that is safe for all patients especially in the gastro wards, having regular audits ensures that correct training policies are adhered to hence maintaining clinical effectiveness by ensuring high standards are maintained. Additionally, the assistant practitioners in the hospitals and in the gastro wards should ensure that complete hand hygiene is observed. Let, for instance, the staff have a high level of skills and knowledge and skills that are far beyond the traditional healthcare. By having the audit being carried out by registered nurses, managers, matrons among others, the hand hygiene compliance becomes totally observable and consequently, improving the clinical effectiveness.

Since auditing in all healthcare settings is a process that is being used by the majority of the health professionals to carry out an assessment, evaluation, and to improve the care of patients, auditing has remained part of clinical governance. Its what, therefore, provides the high quality of the clinical care for patients. I believe this is one of the reasons as to why hand hygiene is a priority in the gastro ward. With such at hand, clinical effectiveness has resulted because the audit tool has been designed and is protecting both the patients and the stuff within the acute environment. Having in mind that hands serve as a route in which infections spread in a high manner, adherence to the hand hygiene has brought clinical effectiveness because it has reduced the spread of infections in the gastro ward and the hospitals at large. Additionally, the audit has helped to reduce the patient mortality and the morbidity rates. For instance, in the gastro ward, the responsible manager is forced to always take responsibility and delegate the members of staff to complete the hand hygiene audit once a week over a month in order to get the results. Once the data has been collected and collated, it then gives a reliable indication of the areas in the hospital where standards are not being met. If the standards are not met, then recommendations to improve in future are made and this is what ensures practices to improve the clinical effectiveness. For instance, if in this case, it is the case of soap dispensers being empty or some certain objects ending up blocking the sinks, the issues are fed to the clinical staff for appropriate interventions to be made.

Analysis of data and the use of the results of the clinical audit and in this case, the hand hygiene audit is used to implement and develop action plans that are used to improve the entire service care and patient care. Once this is done, the clinical effectiveness is affected in a positive manner. The kind of analysis is useful for instance because it supports service planning and the measure of performance and the trend in the service delivery. Such creates a trust in serving the patients. In this case, for instance, all the clinical staff, especially in the gastro ward, are made known of where to access the relevant resources of prevention and infection control. This is so because auditing ensures a systematic monitoring of activities in the gastro ward and maintaining concern in the areas of need and the policy requirements. Consequently, this leads to entire clinical effectiveness.

Clinical audit is a most valuable tool that is used to improve the quality that is being experienced in the healthcare centers. Its general methodology and applications are what bring about clinical effectiveness. Patients in the gastro ward present a lot of problems that need to be addressed and that have been set as topics entailed in the clinical project audit. Audit brigs effectiveness on such because it presents evidence that calls for attention from the health professionals. Since the audit is part of a continuous quality improvement process, it means that its core tip is to facilitate effectiveness in the healthcare by measuring clinical outcomes. The comparison between the clinical standards against the clinical practice adds to clinical effectiveness.

Clinical audit, if used in the correct manner, provides an objective tool that is used to review the entire concept of clinical care. Such comes in a concept of appropriate frameworks of support and improvement. It is, therefore, a powerful tool that leads to the implementation of positive change within the healthcare organizations and which consequently, results in the changes in the clinical practices. If the clinical audit can become a common practice in the current healthcare profession, then it means a mechanism that can be used to express the improvements of the quality of the clinical services for the patients will be improved. Since clinical effectiveness comes with the application of the best available knowledge, clinical audit brings both patient preference and clinical experience. This leads to the achievement of the most optimal processes and positive outcome of the patient care.

Healthcare professionals can use the audit to improve the patient experience. For instance, the healthcare professionals can purpose to work together and reduce the healthcare-associated infections by mostly improving on control practices. The measures that should be taken by the healthcare professionals should be very effective in reducing the risk infections. Therefore, they should improvise in ways that ensure rigorous and constant monitoring. All the clinical staffs in the gastro ward should always ensure that they wash their hands at most appropriate times just like the world health organization demands of them. Washing of hands minimizes the healthcare-acquired infections.

Therefore, auditing should be key among the healthcare professionals since it is the most known effective way of preventing and identifying infections. When the audit tool is identified and developed, identity and conformity to the effective hand hygiene practices and the techniques come in. The healthcare professionals should as well teach the concepts of the above five moments of hand hygiene. For instance, by compressing the five moments of hand hygiene opportunities, audit becomes simple to carry out. For instance, the gastro ward should use the hand hygiene audit tool to make use of before aseptic procedure a basic one.

In order to achieve the best patient experience, the healthcare professionals should use hand hygiene audit tool by making sure that the clinical staffs, the visitors, and patients always wash their hands with clean water and soap before they get into contact with each other. In the gastro ward, this will reduce the chances of cross-contamination and the spread of various kinds of infections. Additionally, the healthcare professionals should ensure that any person who shows signs of gastrointestinal symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea are prevented from visiting the hospital because such people end up increasing the chances of spreading the same infections to the members of staff and patients. There should be a zero tolerance among the healthcare professionals to the poor approach of hand hygiene who work not only in the gastro ward but also in other wards in the hospital. The infection control team should actively and regularly monitor the clinical teams of the gastro wards in order to make sure that they comply with the policies that should be met and that are based on regular auditing sessions.

It is the mandate of the healthcare professionals to ensure that they encourage the members of the public to always practice good hand hygiene for instance when visiting the gastro wards. Such makes and will continue to influence a drop in the infection rates. Since the hand hygiene audit has been ever successful in the promotion of quality improvements at the local levels and hence making an influence of the same in the gastro wards, the health care should take initiatives in ensuring that a critical comparison of data about the entire practice is carried out. If the results standard is met, then it means the patients are safe and if the case is different, then the measures to ensure the same should be taken.

Total patient experience results when the healthcare professionals purposes to attend infection control conferences. The next step comes in when other healthcare professionals and for instance, the student nurses are taught about health promotion to both the patients and other people on how to observe hand hygiene. This is having in mind that the entire healthcare practitioners are and should be accountable to both themselves and their employer and most importantly, to the people they take care of in hospitals. Having such put in practice, therefore, the patient experience ends up being totally improved.

Conclusively, hand hygiene is an effective one not only in the gastro ward but also in an entire hospital. The assistant practitioner has, therefore, a lot to do to ensure that the practice is observed and maintained even in future. For instance, healthcare settings should be involved in more auditing. It is the mandate of the assistant practitioner to ensure that he or she observes other colleagues and the teammates on how and when they clean their hands. Procedures on how to carry out...