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Hand hygiene is the most effective way to stop the spread of microorganisms and to prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The World Health Organization launched the First Global Patient Safety Challenge - Clean Care is Safer Care - in 2005 with the goal to prevent HAI globally. This year, on 5 May, the WHO’s initiative SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands, which focuses on increasing awareness of and improving compliance with hand hygiene practices, celebrated its second global day. In this article, four Member States of the European Union describe strategies that were implemented as part of their national hand hygiene campaigns and were found to be noteworthy. The strategies were: governmental support, the use of indicators for hand hygiene benchmarking, developing national surveillance systems for auditing alcohol-based hand rub consumption, ensuring seamless coordination of processes between health regions in countries with regionalised healthcare systems, implementing the WHO's My Five Moments for Hand Hygiene, and auditing of hand hygiene compliance.

Peer reviewed article ealthcare is delivered in a dynamic environment with frequent changes in populations, methods, equipment and settings. Infection prevention and control practitioners (IPCPs) must ensure that they are competent in addressing the challenges they face and are equipped to develop infection prevention and control (IPC) services in line with a changing world of healthcare provision. A multifaceted Framework was developed to assist IPCPs to enhance competence at an individual, team and organisational level to enable quality performance and improved quality of care. However, if these aspirations are to be met, it is vital that competency frameworks are fit for purpose or they risk being ignored. The aim of this unique study was to evaluate short and medium term outcomes as set out in the Outcome Logic Model to assist with the evaluation of the impact and success of the Framework. This study found that while the Framework is being used effectively in some areas, it is not being used as much or in the ways that were anticipated. The findings will enable future work on revision, communication and dissemination, and will provide intelligence to those initiating education and training in the utilisation of the competences. IntroductionThe World Health Organization (WHO), in a report on the impact of healthcare associated infections (HCAI), summarised the problem as follows: "The impact of healthcare associated infection implies prolonged hospital stay, long-term disability, increased resistance of micro-organisms to antimicrobials, a massive additional financial burden for health systems, high costs for patients and their families and excess deaths" (WHO, 2011, p. 3). Additionally, the WHO (2011) report also highlights that HCAI are a hidden problem that cut across all healthcare settings and are yet to be solved nationally and internationally. However, recent demonstrable improvements in significant HCAI (e.g. meticillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia and Clostridium difficile infection) across the UK indicate that even if the war is not won, significant battles are having an impact. Embedding high standards of infection prevention and control (IPC) practice is fundamental in improving the safety and quality of patient care. To achieve this, it is essential to have a competent and confident workforce to address the continuing and evolving challenges of reducing and controlling HCAI.In 2011, the Infection Prevention Society (IPS), in partnership with the national health departments, Skills for Health, the Council of Deans and other stakeholders published the Outcome Competences Framework for Practitioners in Infection Prevention and Control (Infection Prevention Society, 2011) (hereafter called the Framework). The purpose of the Framework is to assist practitioners working in IPC to build competence throughout their career so that they can provide expert advice and leadership in the pursuit of improved quality of care for patients through the reduction in the burden of disease and illness c...

Professor R. G. Priest and Dr K. A. Day have prepared a discussion document on the future of mental hospital sites on behalf of the Public Policy Committee (Psychiatric Bulletin, April 1990, 14, 245–248), and may be complimented for stating their views in such detail.