Handwashing as an intervention is everyone’s responsibility, but for us as nurses, the NMC Code requires us to ‘promote professionalism and trust’ as one of our main standards, this includes nurses and professionals acting as a role models for other colleagues and patients, including children (NMC, 2021b). This demonstrates the importance of working as a collaborative team to provide the best care for children and their families.
A collaborative framework is known as different professionals working together to deliver the best care, it is argued to be one of the missing 6 C’s because of its importance (Wiltjer, 2017). The nursing 6 C’s are a key value in practice and lie at the core of everything, including handwashing, the 6 C’s are care, compassion, competence, communication, courage, and commitment (Nursing Notes, 2015).
In children’s nursing, a collaborative framework can improve the care provided by working on communication, and working relationships, saving a lot of time and reducing the effort used in repeating information (NHS, 2019). Handwashing as an intervention is a collaborative effort, because if all healthcare professionals do not keep up with the same standards, then bacteria can form and cause harm, even from just one individual.
There are many values involved in a handwashing intervention, all of which influence the containment of infection. Under the NMC standards of proficiency (2018), all nurses must prevent ill health and promote infection prevention and control throughout their practice. This means keeping our standards of hand hygiene high and not allowing it to slip, as this can cause harm to our patients. The NMC code is embedded into us from the start of working in healthcare, allowing it to become our core values to always be working off and holding ourselves accountable to. The NMC guides nurses and midwives, helping to produce a collaborative approach to effective practice, providing everyone with values which they can spread.
The NMC Code (2021c) requires us to prioritize people, people being our patients, and our patients being children. Children require a lot more attention regarding washing their hands and it is our responsibility to give that when they are in our care (Jess et al, 2019). Watson et al (2018), discuss the importance of child’s play and using different interventions and techniques to encourage children to wash their hands. They conducted a study with children who wash their hands with plain soap and children who wash their hands with a modified bar that has a toy inside. The results showed significant uptake in the modified bar, compared to the standard, confirming that with encouragement and fun, children do comply with the intervention. This needs to be a collaborative effort that can be mirrored in all healthcare and home settings.
The National Institute for Care Excellence (NICE) (2014b) published a document of guidance regarding infection prevention and control, which handwashing falls under. NICE guidance is for every professional in the health and social care sector, and handwashing is so important that it has its own guidance. NICE states that effective handwashing means significantly fewer HCAIs and breaks the chain of infection. They have guidance for every profession, and they state that healthcare workers are trained in effective techniques and perform the intervention at every contact.
It is important that we have sufficient knowledge of disease and infection when talking about handwashing intervention, such as the different forms of transmission, for example, the cholera outbreak was linked to drinking the contaminated water carrying the disease, this was discovered by John Snow in 1856 (Shore and Caldwell, 2019). We know that diseases can spread at different levels, outbreaks in a particular area, epidemics in communities, and pandemics worldwide (Anon, 2020). There are different professionals involved in infection control, but it is everyone’s responsibility to follow all advice and guidance given whilst specialists tackle the disease (Sotomayor-Castillo et al, 2021).
It is taught to everyone that washing your hands is the most simple and effective way of preventing illness and containing the spread of diseases (Al-Wutayd et al, 2021). As a collaborative team, we must ensure that we know the importance of washing our hands regularly with soap and water, sanitizing in between, and encouraging others around us, to protect our patients from HCAIs, because currently, all healthcare workers wash their hands around half as much as is advised, which is putting patients at risk (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). It’s important for health and social care workers to keep up to date with relevant policies and guidance surrounding handwashing, as it is always being updated so that HCAIs are kept as low as possible (NMC, 2019).
One skill that is important when working collaboratively to ensure efficient hand hygiene is being able to collaborate with our patients, in this instance children and their families. Bridger and Allen (2019) discussed the importance of hygiene with immunocompromised children and the consequences of infections. They offer guidance for healthcare workers involved in the care of unwell children and how to manage the risks involved, this is a team effort and all bodies involved in the care must be complying and practice effectively and demonstrate to the child the importance of this skill.
Another important skill in working collaboratively to deliver the handwashing intervention is being aware and mindful of yourself and others around you. As part of the NMC Code (2021d), we are told to work within our own competence and limits, and everyone’s limits are different. Whilst we must respect people’s competency and abilities, we must not forget that if we are seeing bad practice, causing potential harm to patients, there is the opportunity to perform whistleblowing, raising concerns to those in charge which can be anonymous, to protect individuals from harm (NMC, 2021).
To summarise this discussion, we can confirm that handwashing is an essential skill in Children’s Nursing that protects from disease and further harm in the healthcare setting. It is evident that performing this skill cuts deaths and transmission of disease, saving lives and reducing HCAI’S. All professionals in health care settings are involved in this intervention, ensuring that they act as role models in the workplace, influencing others to act as efficiently. Bacteria is all around us, but it is our responsibility that in the workplace we minimize the spread and protect our Children.