Your Health Care - Be Involved - Clean Hands Protect Lives
To demonstrate its continued commitment to patient safety, the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA) with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC), has developed a campaign designed to educate patients about the importance of effective hand hygiene. This campaign has been branded, “Clean Hands Protect Lives”, and it complements the OHA’s successful, “Your Health Care – Be Involved” campaign, which was launched in September 2005.
“Clean Hands Protect Lives” aligns very closely with the MOHLTC’s, “Just Clean Your Hands” program, which was developed to help health care providers improve their hand hygiene and integrate this practice into their organization’s culture.
Effective hand hygiene practices in hospitals play a role in improving patient and provider safety, and in preventing the spread of health care-associated infections. The goal of “Clean Hands Protect Lives” is to educate and empower patients about personal hand hygiene while managing their expectations about when health care providers should clean their hands.
The campaign’s message is simple and straightforward, stating that, “Hand cleaning is one of the best ways you and your health care team can prevent the spread of many infections.” The message was developed following extensive focus group testing with patients and health care providers.
Educating patients about the importance of personal hand hygiene is a critical element in transforming a hospital’s culture and improving patient safety. Through “Clean Hands Protect Lives”, Ontario hospitals are provided with the messages and supporting materials they need to make quality improvements within their organization, and reinforce that effective hand hygiene is the responsibility of both the patient and health care provider.
The patient education and brand materials are available in high resolution files to enable cost efficient reproduction. Files will be translated and available on this website in 13 other languages shortly after the public launch in November 2008.
For more information about the “Clean Hands Protect Lives” program, contact Dominique Taylor, OHA Patient Safety Consultant at dtaylor@oha.com or 416-205-1372.
English:
Poster
Pamphlet
Card
French
Poster
Pamphlet
Card