I used to think that I washed my hands very often during my working day, because I am sure that we all do this because of the way we work and the close contact we have with patients.
I used to think I washed my hands very thoroughly. now I am all too aware that I have not washed them for at least 20 seconds.
In these days of the Covid 19 pandemic, I have to increase both the frequency of washing and the duration of the washing process. In addition, and this is new, I have to encourage my patients to wash their hands more often.
The 20-second wash output is interesting; The general advice of “singing happy birthday twice” or just looking at a watch certainly makes a difference, but I soon found it boring – how can we make it more interesting and hope to develop good habits that we need will keep up for the foreseeable future?
My personal solution (for now – I know it will get boring soon, so I have to change …) is to use every wash as an opportunity to channel my inner Lady Macbeth and to declare her famous handwashing speech "Out, damned spot" from Shakespeare's wonderful, if slightly bloody, piece.
It's really perfect since it washes its hands (ok, I admit it is usually portrayed as a wrong wash without water or soap, but hey, the movements are the same) and takes the monologue the right kind of time.
There is a great website where anyone can easily create their own hand wash infographic. So if you want to imagine that you are trying to wash King Duncan's blood from your guilty hands, this is exactly what you need to put a sink over your workplace:
Everyone can create their own lyric poster for washing their hands!
