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It’s that time of the year again, when our hands get dry…it’s nasty and uncomfortable and doing what we do for work doesn’t help. Here’s an article about how dry hands can spread infection.

Hand-Care Products: the Gloves Are Off
By Cantrell, Susan

Studies have shown that a reason oft-repeated by healthcare workers as to why they aren’t always compliant with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s “Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Healthcare Settings”1 is because frequent washing causes dry, cracked skin. That’s not just an aesthetic problem; it’s an occupational hazard for themselves and their patients. Cracks in dry skin provide perfect hiding places for pathogens that can be transferred from Healthcare workers’ (HCWs) hands to sick patients in the blink of an eye.

Sprixx hand sanitizers

The problem of hand care is so serious that it garners much attention from high-profile regulatory and advisory agencies. The CDC considers skin dermatitis to be a critical healthcare issue.1 Thejoint Commission on Accreditation for Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) surveils for compliance with the CDC’s hand-hygiene guideline as part of its National Patient Safety Goals.2 The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health notes that “skin disorders are the number one occupational illness across all occupations and cost $1 billion annually.1 The Association for Professions in Infection Control and Epidemiology Inc., (APIC) advises HCWs to “insist on products that promote and maintain healthy skin, reduce transepidermal water loss, increase skin hydration (moisturization), and have low irritancy potential.”4

The stepped-up attention to hand care has industry constantly developing new and improved hand-care products to address this important problem.

What should you look for?

Makers of hand-care products are a source of valuable advice when it comes to effective hand care. They’ve spent a fortune researching what works before their products go on the market. They’re not inclined to risk losing that fortune and potential profits by placing products on the market that they don’t have reason to believe will perform. What do these experts have to say about what to look for in hand-care products?

Compatibility

Kirsten M. Thompson, technical service expert, Ecolab, St. Paul, MN, suggested looking for alcohol-based hand rubs and lotions that are compatible with other antimicrobial hand products, providing this example: “Compatibility of hand-care products is important, because persistent antimicrobial activity of chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) could be diminished if you followed a hand wash containing CHG with a lotion that wasn’t CHG-compatible.” Steve Rausch, director of marketing, Apollo Corporation, Somerset, WI, concurred: “The most expensive products you can buy are those that don’t work.”

Skin-friendliness

“It’s also important for hand-care products to be skin- friendly,” observed Thompson. “If users don’t like a product, they won’t use it; so, look for a formulation acceptable to most users.”

Thompson also advised HCWs to use waterless hand rubs, such as Ecolab’s Endure 320 alcohol gel, that have emollients built in. “HCWs may have to wash their hands or rub their hands with a waterless product 40 to 50 times per day. Their hands can become dry and cracked, which hurts. Dry, cracked, bleeding hands are vulnerable to infection, and the bacteria they harbor can be difficult to eradicate. A hand-rub product that leaves an emollient behind not only can kill bacteria, it can preserve the integrity of the skin. The Endure line encompasses the entire spectrum of hand care: soap, alcohol-based hand rubs, surgical scrubs, and lotion, which are formulated to work well together. SkinSynergy is the basis for the Endure line. It’s a patented system used to formulate a family of products. The combination of products works as good, if not better, together than each component does separately.”

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