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Hand washing is one of the simplest, yet most effective, ways to reduce infections in the hospital. A recent study from the University of North Carolina found that one out of every 20 hospital patients develops an infection they didn’t have when admitted to the hospital, and many of those infections are caused by poor hand hygiene.
At CPMC, and at every other hospital I know, there has been a concerted effort to help staff do a better job of washing their hands. But those efforts haven’t always been as successful as we’d like, and they typically focus on the front-line caregivers, like physicians and nurses.
Now we are trying something a little different. Our infection control team has teamed up with our environmental services (EVS) staff to come up with a new and creative way to keep our patients safe. They’ve put together a rap video.
(And, yes, when I tried to access this from within CPMC I got that familiar warning message; we’re working on uploading it to our intranet site.)
I’m no aficionado of rap music (my radio dial is set semi-permanently at 104.5 for KFOG), so I can’t judge this video on its merits as rap, but I can tell you that it’s awesome as an educational tool. It conveys the message about the need for good hygiene and cleaning habits in a fun, engaging and entertaining manner.
How can you not love lyrics like “The EVS keep the hospital clean/It’s infections we prevent if you know what I mean/Bacteria on equipment, devices and me/EVS removes them to keep the room germ-free?”
Hospitals often get a bad rap for not doing a better job at infection control. We’re trying to counter that with a good rap.
Let’s clap washour hands for the team that assembled the video, including….
Karen Anderson who wrote the lyrics and makes a cameo appearance in the piece
CPMC Media Services shot and edited the video
Justin Paulk is the “Rapper”
Maria Valencia is the Housekeeper
David McReynalds is Mr. C-Diff
Reynaldo Arradaza is a Spore
Markeith Anderson is a Spore
Wanda Steagall is one of the hallway dancing managers
Walter Brown is also one of the hallway dancing managers
For the past several years, we have understood that the phrase Beyond Medicine reflects our commitment to deliver the very best care by treating the whole person, not just the disease. But what seems obvious to us doesn’t always seem so obvious to our patients. For them the words Beyond Medicine may not always convey the commitment we bring to our job every day.
That’s why we have launched a new campaign to explain to our patients that when they come to CPMC they will get the very best health care delivered with a personal touch. We call it Hands-on-Healing. The campaign will feature the hands of caregivers as we take care of patients.
Touch comes in many forms in the hospital. We support a patient’s wrist when checking an erratic pulse; we palpate a tender abdomen; and we flex and extend an arthritic joint. We hold a fearful hand; we massage an anxious shoulder; and, yes, sometimes we touch a broken heart. Our hands lift the frail; repair the wounded; and deliver the tiny. All of these forms of hands-on healing show that we care about our patients as individuals and that we have compassion for their problems.
Over the next few months you are going to see and hear Hands-on-Healing ads in newspapers and magazines, on buses and billboards, and on radio and TV. They are a way of reaching beyond our hospital walls to connect with our communities and let them know who we are and what we do.
Medical technology helps us care for patients in ways that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. But the basic elements of the best health care remain the same: the skill, experience, and compassion of caregivers, delivered in a personal, hands-on way.
