How to get involved

SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands

This year we have many ideas and products for you to get involved in World Hand Hygiene Day!

These are for all those with an interest in participating in and celebrating World Hand Hygiene Day 2022.  

How to get involved in and support the campaign: build excitement and momentum

• Promote the concept, actions and products related to 5 May 2022 by using the slides included in the advocacy presentation and annual campaign toolkit. 

• Show your facility’s commitment to hand hygiene improvement at the point of care. Sign up for the Save Lives: Clean Your Hands campaign - we need more and more health care organizations to show their commitment to the campaign, so do encourage others to register.

• Display the 2022 campaign banner and posters on your facility’s walls. Download the campaign posters, email signature strips, the Zoom background and other resources, to help you show your support. All campaign assets can be accessed here. 

Social media messaging

This year's WHHD campaign theme recognizes people at all levels can work together on clean hands to positively influence the culture and climate of safety and quality in health care delivery. Conversely, a strong quality and safety culture will encourage and support people to clean hands at the right times and with the right products. The slogan for this year’s campaign is ‘Unite for Safety – clean your hands’.

To secure appropriate behaviours and attitudes towards clean hands in health facilities, people at all levels need to unite in believing in the importance of hand hygiene and IPC to save lives it. Targeted messages for key audiences for this year’s campaign are:

• Health workers: Thank you for leading by example and encouraging others to clean their hands.
• IPC practitioners: Thank you for engaging health workers to be part of new hand hygiene initiatives.
• Quality & safety leads: Thank you for working with infection prevention colleagues to support hand hygiene improvement. 
• Facility mangers: Thank you for promoting a quality and safety culture to ensure clean hands.
• Policy-makers: Thank you for prioritizing resources, training and programmes on hand hygiene.
• People who use health care: Thank you for getting involved in local hand hygiene campaigns and activities.

Suggested messages to be issued on and around 5 May:

Download our social media messaging outline and tiles for more ideas leading up to and on 5 May 2022.

Running a virtual (or face to face) hand hygiene café/lounge

What is the hand hygiene café/lounge?

The hand hygiene Café or lounge format seeks to achieve individual and collective commitment, knowledge as well as lessons identified in an open and welcoming forum, and as such, share future ideas and insights for hand hygiene improvement as a valued part of a quality and safety health care culture.

Where can these be conducted?

This activity can be conducted virtually (or face to face) in hospitals and in the community, long term care and public health settings as well as outreach settings.

Who should conduct the hand hygiene café/lounge?

It can be conducted by IPC practitioners/focal points or by other health care leaders in order to connect with colleagues and to generate ideas to organize new initiatives for renewed and on-going commitment to clean hands.

When should they be conducted as part of World Hand Hygiene Day, 5 May?

You can conduct a virtual (or face to face café) any time around 5 May, ideally on 5 May if possible. They usually take only 20 minutes! You can consider to conduct more than one, maybe five!

What are the suggestions for preparing and running them?

Plan:

• to engage a few health care workers in advance, to speak up in the café/lounge;
• download and plan to use the WHO 2022 campaign zoom background on the screen if a virtual cafe;
• to keep it relaxed, plan to provide snacks if possible or ask everyone to bring a coffee and snack, especially if running a virtual café; and
• to record the session (with permissions) – this could be shared on the hospital intranet, for use in training sessions, to be shown on hospital TVs, for future communication plans, to illustrate key findings from current health care facility perceptions to share with wards, to report at infection prevention and control/hospital committees and to potentially use on social media to reflect on or evaluate the process.  

Invites – aim for a range of different disciplines

Length of time – 20 minutes

Advertising - use the WHO provided template to advertise the event, as a poster or electronic flier, including the date, time, and joining details for virtual connection. 

Introduction - when opening the café, keep it light and engaging for everyone. Use WHO campaign wording to help you if necessary

Presentation – You may want to use a short engaging presentation or a video – use the WHO slide set to engage people on the topic if needed or use the new campaign short animated video or short multimodal explanatory video.

Suggested topics to discuss:

1. hand hygiene word of the day – find more information here (see instruction below); 
2. case studies – try collecting some through your own networks or use information you already have;
3. ideas for new hand hygiene improvement initiatives;
4. a latest hospital publication/report that includes hand hygiene or infection prevention, patient safety or quality of care; or
5. an article that's recently been published.

Potential takeaways/learning - for infection prevention and control practitioners/focal points to consider in relation to the theme for WHO world hand hygiene day, 5 May 2022:

• How did the café(s) experiences go?
• Did everyone speak up, if not, why do you think this was the case?
• How might interactions between different health workers be addressed going forward, in relation to team work and uniting on safety?
• Are there ways you think you could continue to unite different health workers in discussing/staying involved in innovative ideas for hand hygiene improvement?
• Are there ways you think you can share your findings from the café(s) with others to explore the dynamics between staff?

Hand hygiene word of the day – engaging health workers through learning the meaning and fun facts about commonly used words

Instructions for promoting word of the day

When: For 5 days around 5 May, plan to highlight a hand hygiene word of the day. Think about the best times to engage people in this activity, it could be on a daily round or flash meeting.

Organize: Think about defining the chosen word/words, or outlining why this word is important. Engage others including leadership at this stage if possible (be collaborative!). Create materials to share the hand hygiene word of the day activity - use an image, if possible, to outline what the word means to the health facility. Consider using Whatsapp groups (other networked social media platforms), posters in booths erected for 5 May celebrations, on hospital announcement systems, post it on the intranet.

Reach out: Advertise the activity. Tell people to look out for ‘word of the day’ around 5 May! (fliers, online/intranet, etc.). Ask other staff to do the same action for their own colleagues, on 5 May!

Describe: Tell people where they can find word of the day and to pass on the information to their colleagues.

Summarize: Consider evaluating if this activity has engaged staff and how, and share a short summary report with colleagues.

WHO’s 5 suggested words of the day: moment, quality, safety, teams, hands! Use the WHO fliers promoting these words should you choose too.

Thank you for your support!

Your actions will build public trust, support, confidence and co-operation.