Hand Washing Techniques & Importances

It takes at least fifteen seconds to wash your hands properly – this is about how long it takes to sing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ twice through!

Encourage children to wash their hands by showing them how to do it, and by setting them a good example.

How to wash your hands:

1. Wet hands with water
2. Apply enough soap and handwash to cover all hand surfaces
3. Rub hands palm to palm
4. Right palm over the other hand with interlaced fingers and vice versa
5. Palm to palm with fingers interlaced
6. Backs of fingers to opposing palms with fingers interlocked
7. Rotational rubbing of left thumb clasped in right palm and vice versa
8. Rotational rubbing, backwards and forwards with clasped fingers of right hand in left palm and vice versa
9. Rince hands with water
10. Dry thoroughly with towel. Duration of procedure: At least 15 seconds

Importance of Handwashing and Hand Hygiene

Facts about hand hygiene and washing hands

1. Sickness absence costs employers £495 a year in direct costs for every worker employed. Indirect costs are probably considerably more (CBI 2005 statistics)
2. Norovirus – a common form of sickness and diarrhoea can result in individuals being off work for up to four days
3. Handwashing is the best way to avoid colds, flu and other viruses (Professor John Oxford, of London’s Queen Mary’s School of Medicine, and various others)
4. Up to half of all men and a quarter of women fail to wash their hands after they’ve been to the toilet
5. We have between 2 and 10 million bacteria between fingertip and elbow
6. The number of germs on your fingertips doubles after you use the toilet
7. Germs can stay alive on hands for up to three hours