Call for participation!

2nd Phase of International Hand Hygiene Survey
First Global Patient Safety Challenge – Clean Care is Safer Care

In March 2007 the First Global Patient Safety Challenge of the World Alliance for Patient Safety, in collaboration with the Patients for Patient Safety Programme and Dr. Maryanne McGuckin, USA, initiated an international survey on Hand Hygiene to determine:

• The availability of hand hygiene products (soap and water and/or alcohol-based hand rubs.)
• The extent of patient empowerment in hand hygiene.
• What programmes exist within respondent’s countries and communities to promote hand hygiene and infection control.
• What approaches were considered most useful to educate people in regard to hand hygiene.
• Personal experiences of health-care associated infections.

This first phase of the survey was recently completed focusing primarily the World Alliance for Patient Safety, Patients for Patient Safety Champion network and a report of those results from the survey is available on the website at: http://www.who.int/gpsc/en/index.html

In partnership with IAPO we are now launching the second phase of the International survey on Hand Hygiene, which will widen the scope of the research. This call is to seek IAPO members and their patient networks to participate in this important survey. The patient perspective is vital to all the work areas of the World Alliance programme and the results from this survey will feed directly into the final guidelines on Hand Hygiene produced by the WHO World Alliance for Patient Safety team and due to be launched towards the end of 2008.

The Survey can be found by following the links in the languages below:

Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, English, French, Russian, Spanish

The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete and we would be very grateful for your time in assisting us with this work. Please feel free to circulate this link to your wider networks. We would encourage you to complete the survey on line at the address above, however if this is not possible and you would rather complete it in hard copy please contact Michal Frances at Michal.Frances@dh.gsi.gov.uk

We would like to thank you in advance for your assistance with this piece of work and for your time in completing the survey. The results will be available early 2008.

Many thanks,

Rachel Heath
Project Manager Officer
Patients for Patient Safety
World Alliance for Patient
Safety

Julie Storr
Project Manager
Clean Care is Safer Care
World Alliance for Patient
Safety

Jo Harkness
Chief Executive
IAPO