DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2015.v03i02.007

Pages: 155-160

The first global patient safety challenge is “Clean care is safe care” and is aimed at reducing health care-associated infection (HCAI) worldwide. A key action within “Clean Care is Safer Care” is to promote hand hygiene globally and at all levels of health care. Hand hygiene, is well accepted to be one of the primary modes of reducing HCAI and of enhancing patient safety. The aim and objective of the study was to survey the hand washing facilities in OPD. A check list was adopted from another study for assessing the condition of each sink in different rooms of OPD complex. All the available rooms were assessed on a single occasion and the descriptive analysis was done. The hand washing facility was available in 80 (99%) rooms. At all places sinks were easily accessible to the users. The taps were in the working conditions at all the sinks, out which 71(89%) were hand operated and rests were elbow operated. Soap stand was available at the majority of the places (90%). The cleansing agent was available at most of the places (i.e. 96%) and at most of the places it was soap bar (96%). No sink had hand washing instructions displayed demonstrating the correct technique of hand washing. The physical facilities required for hand washing were adequate though there is a scope of improvement. The Hospital Administrators should work in the direction of providing best possible hand washing facilities keeping in view their budgetary estimates.