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Southlake Regional Health Centre Launches “Just Clean Your Hands”

Pilot project at 10 Ontario hospitals aimed at improving health care worker hand hygiene

Newmarket, March 5, 2007 - Southlake Regional Health Centre will be one of ten hospitals across Ontario testing and evaluating a program focused on improving hand hygiene by health care workers Dan Carriere, President  & CEO, Southlake Regional Health Centre today announced.  The hospitals involved in the pilot will be instrumental in helping to shape a provincial improvement strategy for hand hygiene. 

The overall goal of the program is to obtain and sustain a long term improvement in hand hygiene practices by Ontario’s health care workers.  Hand hygiene is the single most important way to prevent the spread of infections.

“When health care workers clean their hands before and after touching each patient, it helps stop germs from spreading," said Dr. Nancy Merrow, Chief of Staff, Southlake Regional Health Centre.  "We want to prevent our patients from getting these infections in the first place, and one of the most important ways we can do this is to clean our hands".

The program, “Just Clean Your Hands”, has been designed to help strengthen the culture at Southlake that infection prevention and control is everyone’s business.   Beginning in March, the pilot will run for six months at Southlake.  It’s a multifaceted program that includes education, senior management commitment, workplace role models and a communications toolkit.  The results from the pilot will be evaluated by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to determine which components are suitable to be included in a province-wide program.

“The goal of the “Just Clean Your Hands” program is to improve health care worker compliance with proper hand hygiene. As Southlake has an excellent reputation for practicing good infection prevention and control measures, we were pleased to participate in this important study. It is just another way to ensure that patients and staff remains as healthy as possible,” said Dan Carriere, President & CEO.

For further information, and to see a short video on hand hygiene, please click here.

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