Your Five Moments explained Community based care WHO Five Moments approach to hand hygiene April 2009

What are the Five Moments?  An approach to hand hygiene developed by The World Health Organisation  Aims to ensure hand hygiene is geographically appropriate  Aims to ensure hand hygiene is temporally appropriate

Why was the Five Moments approach developed?  To reduce unnecessary hand hygiene  To stress the importance of the correct location and time for hand hygiene  To ensure the chain of transmission is broken by hand hygiene and thus prevent HCAI

What is a Moment for hand hygiene?  A Moment is a temporal point, i.e. a specific time marked by a point in staff workflow  A Moment is not a reason, or indicator, for hand hygiene  Each Moment is a time when many indicators for hand hygiene can occur

What is an indicator for hand hygiene?  An indicator for hand hygiene is an individual action carried out by someone providing care  This can be any action that can be considered as belonging to one of the Five Moments  This specifically applies to actions which take place within a patient zone

Patient zone  This is an area in the immediate vicinity of the patient where care is provided  This may include many types of outpatient, community and practice based care environments  However it is not specific in relation to types of professional or types of care be they medical, mental health, dental, social, nursing, supportive, or any other

When do patient zones exist?  When a person is receiving care in a specific area  The patient zone ceases to exist when the care provision ends  The patient zone is the name given to the area around the point of care, it does not suggest that all care recipients are classed as patients in the traditional sense

WHEN? Clean your hands when approaching a care recipient at point of care WHY? To protect them from harmful germs carried on your hands

Moment one  Occurs before first contact  Occurs as near to the point of care as possible  May occur in combination with other moments

WHEN? Clean your hands immediately before any clean/aseptic procedure WHY? To protect the person from harmful germs from the environment, and themselves, being introduced

Moment two  Important to stop introduction of environmental pathogens to the care recipient  Also stops invasive introduction of the persons own flora  May be combined with moment one, but ONLY if the first contact is a clean/aseptic procedure  This moment will be more relevant to some professions than others

WHEN? Clean your hands immediately after an exposure risk to body fluids, including after glove removal WHY? To protect yourself against harmful germs from the care Recipient and patient zone

Moment three  The rationale for moment three is to prevent contamination of care providers with germs carried in body fluids  It is important to realise that even if gloves have been worn during a task this constitutes an exposure risk, once gloves have been removed the hands cannot be considered clean until moment 3 has been complied with

WHEN? Clean your hands after touching a care recipient when leaving the point of care WHY? To protect yourself, and the next care recipient, and their home against harmful germs from the care recipient you are leaving

WHEN? Clean your hands after touching any object or furniture in the patient zone, even if the care recipient is not present or has not been touched WHY? To protect yourself, and the next care recipient, and their home against harmful germs from the patient zone you are leaving

Summary There are some key definitions within the Five Moments approach  Moments  Indicators  Point of care  Patient zone  Compliance These are illustrated and explained in the DVD My Five Moments for hand hygiene and supporting presentations

Reference and support  For references see the resource pack reference list  For support contact the cleanyourhands campaign coordinator in your organisation  For more information see the cleanyourhands campaign website at