Use of Alcohol-based Hand Sanitizers in Public Health Centers
Introduction
Adherence to hand hygiene protocol and regulations in health care centers and hospitals is essential in preventing hospital-acquired infections among patients and health care workers. This is because most bacterial and viral infections are easily carried and transmitted with hands that have been contaminated with bacterial and viral infections (Packyanathan & Muralidharan, 2019). Both patients and health care providers should adhere to hand washing to ensure its efficacy in preventing hospital-acquired infections (Vermeil et al. 2019). The most common methods of ensuring hand hygiene are the use of soap, water, and alcohol-based hand sanitizers. However, this article will address how the use of alcohol-based sanitizers compares to the use of water in helping reduce infections.
For this article, the research question is: In adults admitted to a hospital, how does the effectiveness of the use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers compare to the use of soap and water in helping reduce hospital-acquired infections during hospital admissions? The population used for the study includes patients aged 18 to 60 years. The study only included those patients that have been admitted for more than two weeks. The intervention involved randomly selecting a group of the selected sample of patients and having them follow hand hygiene regulations using alcohol-based sanitizers only. For the control experiment, another group of patients will be made to follow the same hand hygiene regulations, but using soap and water only and not alcohol-based sanitizers.
For the outcomes, the rate of hospital-acquired infections in patients during the experiment period was measured. This was done by recording the number of patients who were reported to have acquired infections during their admission while using either of the two methods of hand hygiene. Three months will be used for the research study with the information on patients being collected weekly during the three months. The input from healthcare providers, such as nurses and clinicians, will be vital for the success of the study.
While using alcohol-based hand sanitizers may prove to be more effective in improving patients’ health outcomes by reducing hospital-acquired infections, its implementation may be limited by various economic and regulatory factors. Economic barriers to the use of alcohol-based sanitizers in hospitals include inaccessible and limited supply due to the cost of producing the sanitizers. This has contributed to fewer companies getting involved in their manufacturing resulting in limited supply. It will be hard for most hospitals to implement the change when they cannot get enough supplies to enable the change. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers are also way more expensive compared to soaps. Most public hospitals would rather use soaps and water to make it hard to implement the change to using alcohol-based hand sanitizers.
The regulations on the manufacture and use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers also make it hard to implement the change in health centers. The government has set restrictive measures to the manufacture hand sanitizers, such as the increased taxation of the manufacturers. Many people, therefore, shy away from the manufacture of alcohol-based sanitizers. This contributes to shortages in supply, making it hard to supply hand sanitizers to all health facilities. Without the availability of adequate sanitizers, then implementing the change is impossible. The FDA has set several restrictions regarding the safety of some of the substances used in manufacturing alcohol-based sanitizers, limiting its supply. To successfully implement the change, some of the restrictions on the manufacture of alcohol-based hand sanitizers should be removed to ensure adequate supply.
References
Packyanathan, J. S., & Muralidharan, N. P. (2019). Comparison of the Antimicrobial effect of Ethanolic Hand Sanitizers and other Hand Disinfection Methods in Hospitals. Research Journal of Pharmacy and Technology, 12(1), 16-20.
Vermeil, T., Peters, A., Kilpatrick, C., Pires, D., Allegranzi, B., & Pittet, D. (2019). Hand hygiene in hospitals: anatomy of a revolution. Journal of Hospital Infection, 101(4), 383-392.