General Tips

HANDWASHING 101
HOW TO PROPERLY WASH YOUR HANDS

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other leading medical authorities, the proper practice of hand hygiene is one of the most important – if not the most important – activity that individuals can do to ensure their own health and safety as well as the health and safety of those around them.

This is particularly important for businesspeople today, because illness spread through hand contact can have devastating effects. When individuals become sick, the businesses they work for or patronize become ill as well. Absences are extremely costly, as is lost productivity. And litigation brought by customers who contracted illness from a business can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars, closures and loss of license.

It's in the best interests of businesspeople today to ensure that they and their staff know how to properly was their hands. While this sounds like a skill that all of us should know, surprisingly few of us actually wash our hands as thoroughly or effectively as we should. What follows are some guidelines to improve our health and the health of our businesses through better hand hygiene:

• Use warm water
• Wet your hands before applying soap to avoid irritation
• Rub your hands together vigorously – merely placing them under running water is not enough to do an adequate job
• Continue rubbing vigorously for about 15 seconds
• Some recommend helping children gauge their hand washing time by using a memory aid, like singing the alphabet
• Make sure to scrub both sides of the hands, around the thumbs, between the fingers and under the nails
• Rinse with clean water
• Dry thoroughly, and use a clean towel or paper towel – thorough drying is essential, because 1,000 times as many germs spread from damp hands than dry ones
• When in public, avoid direct contact with restroom surfaces that others may have touched, especially the knob on hand-crank models of towel dispensers