A Danish report published by the National Antibiotic Council of Denmark (Det Nationale Antibiotikaråd) and the Ministry of Health and the Elderly (Sundheds og Ældreministeriet) discusses the ways to use less antibiotics. It is available at the link below.
It recommends that by working with hygiene locally you can prevent and reduce sick leave in high profile places and professions where illness is more prominent. This can include day cares, schools, hospitals, and elderly care facilities among others. Additionally, within the text it shares that in Copenhagen municipalities home care environments, hygiene instructions are often not complied with. The report also focused on General Practice in healthcare environments.
Multi-resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance pose an increasing challenge across communities. It is important that for future efforts that we focus on interrupting transmission routes and preventing infectious diseases.
In general, it suggests that in practice Denmark is already good at limiting antibiotic consumption and choosing narrow-spectrum antibiotics. But there are opportunities to become even better at targeting treatment and thus limiting the development of resistance.
One such measure, suggested in the report is the use of nudging, a technique that activates behaviour, and measuring hand hygiene compliance data for hand hygiene improvement work. A popular European solution for accomplishing this is Sani Nudge’s hand hygiene technology.
Sani Nudge’s hand hygiene solution generates live data using nudging, in our case using built in lights, ensuring that employees have a greater focus on performing hand hygiene. This technology is proven to improve hand hygiene compliance at all levels of a medical organization.
Each employee wears a small ID that is recorded by sensors installed alcohol or soap. Each sensor has built-in light (nudging) that ensures that employees have a greater focus on performing hand hygiene on sanitizing dispensers and sensors adjacent to each patient best. Within a defined distance and by detecting movements, the SN system determines whether the employee has been in patient contact, and based on hygiene guidelines, reports the compliance department of a given area, often a department or ward given time.
Hygiene managers can easily monitor whether the department is following the hygiene guidelines via a dashboard on a website and see if there is improvement or worsening seen over a given period. All data is generated using an ID, so it will also be possible to monitor whether there is better compliance with the guidelines at some times of the day than others.
For more on automated hand hygiene technologies, visit saninudge.com.
