Mindful Hand Hygiene

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, International Symposium on Human Factors in Healthcare

Dr Joan Cahill, Alison Kay & Vivienne Howard (School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) Ber Mulcahy and Siji George (Bon Secours Hospital, Cork, Ireland) Prof Gerard Lacey (School of Computer Science & Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, & Surewash) Richie Harte and Frank O Reilly (Learnovate, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) Rachel Nolan (Tallaght Hospital, Dublin, Ireland) Prof Fidelma Fitzpatrick & Eva Ziampra (Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland) presented their interactive poster at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, International Symposium on Human Factors in Healthcare (Virtual Sympiousm - 12 to 14 April, 2021).

The presentation entitled "Mindful hand hygiene and self-guided training using a Mobile Phone App" is linked to their research in the SFI sponsored PPE Safe project.

Lunch N Learn

You can listen back to and view the slides from our recent Lunch N Learn webinar series below.

Webinar: Human Factors in Everyday Healthcare: Mindful Hand Hygiene 

The mindful hand hygiene/handwashing and workplace wellness and resilience research collaboration has grown out of an ongoing research partnership between researchers at the Centre for Innovative Human Systems (CIHS), School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Dublin, Ireland, the Nursing Team at Bon Secours Hospital, Cork, Ireland, researchers in both emergency care and theatre at Tallaght hospital Dublin, and Learnovate, TCD.

This collaboration started in the PPE Safe Project (2020-2021), sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), as part of the COVID 19 Rapid Response Programme.

“Use mindfulness to deal with stress, burnout and fear. Mindfulness can be used to get the mind to settle on the WHO hand hygiene technique, while also enabling self-awareness, self-compassion, and safe care delivery”. - Ber Mulcahy, Bon Secours Hospital, Cork.

“Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing. We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.” - Jon Kabat-Zinn, Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

We would like to foster and enable self-care and resilience for healthcare workers.
Mindfulness is one of many tools that can assist healthcare worker wellbeing, and in turn, support safe and compassionate patient care. 

There are different moments for mindfulness – including the start and end of the working day, and as part of an integrated hand hygiene/hand washing practice.
Mindfulness needs to be implemented from a human-factors and ‘systems’ approach to transformation in healthcare service delivery. 

• Staying in good physical and mental health, is essential for HCW during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond
• Resilience to “prepare for”, “recover from” and “adapt to” stressful or traumatic situations and events
• Mindfulness has been shown to reduce stress, burnout and anxiety as well as building and fostering resilience
• Mindfulness acts as a ‘protective factor’ against empathy fatigue and compassion fatigue
• Preventative and proactive approach

• Perform hand hygiene /hand washing task mindfully
• Opportunity self-care and protection (staff and patient safety)
• Using the WHO technique in combination with the mindfulness exercise - bringing attention to the moment
• Mindfulness enables HCW to focus on the correct procedure for hand washing along with addressing the need for self-care

Our two mindfulness techniques (1) mindful hand washing and (2) mindful hand hygiene, have been validated as part of the PPE Safe, Project.
See what HCW have to say:

• “Good. Feel more confident to start on another patient.”
• “It's a good idea to find some time for own wellbeing.”
• “I will be more focused it will refresh my mind”.
• “Great to prepare for my journey home”.
• “Great to focus at the start of the day”