Alexandra Peters

1 week ago | infectioncontroltoday.com | Alexandra Peters

Normally, I use this column to talk about issues specifically related only to environmental hygiene. But in honor of the World Health Organization (WHO) May 5 World Hand Hygiene Day,1 I would like to focus on the misuse and overuse of gloves in health care. Any of us who have worked in health care have all seen someone touch numerous things in a room with gloves on and then insert a catheter into a patient without doing hand hygiene.

Jan 30, 2025 | infectioncontroltoday.com | Alexandra Peters

True revolutions happen comparatively rarely in infection prevention compared to other fields of medicine.1 I would argue that the main one in the last 30 years was a shift from cleaning hands with soap and water to using alcohol-based hand rubs at the point of care. On the one hand, this shift was convenient because hand rubbing can be performed anywhere, takes much less time than washing hands correctly, and is ultimately less damaging to the skin.

Nov 7, 2024 | infectioncontroltoday.com | Alexandra Peters

Outsourcing is often cited as a problem in ensuring health care facilities’ ability to provide quality environmental hygiene. However, it's becoming increasingly common in many regions. If a health care facility lacks specialized in-house knowledge about environmental hygiene or the capacity to spend time finding, hiring, and training environmental service workers.