Cleaning your hands effectively

So we are going to demonstrate hand washing. Hand washing is something that is done very frequently in healthcare, and although we have alcohol gels, they are only good for a few cleansing actions. But when washing our hands, we need to be very thorough and we need to wash with soap and water and properly dry our hands as well. So I'm just going to demonstrate the correct technique, the NHS technique, for washing one's hands. And there are a number of hand positions. Each hand position is repeated. The actions within that hand position are repeated five times for each one. So to start with, we need a water supply, we have got our soap, we have got our paper towels here. So we are going to be washing our wrists right through to our fingertips. All rings should be removed. We are allowed to have one ring that does not have any studding. A plain wedding band is all we are allowed to have.

So initially, we wet our hands. All the areas, we are going to wash. We need them thoroughly wetted with water, both hands, plenty of soap. We can... Just by rubbing our hands together. This is position one. So you would be doing five circles. I am doing many more in each hand position. Turn one hand over and on the back, interlacing the fingers, in between the fingers five times, and again, reversing the hands. Then instead of using the backs of our hands, we use the front of our hands, in between, palms of our hands five times or as many as you like really. The important thing is you get your hands clean. Doing exactly the same with one hand as we do with the other, not forgetting the thumb, circular motion for the thumb, and again, the other hand and the wrist. And the wrist, moving to, gripping the height of the fingers, both together like this, five times, without touching anything, only the water, getting rid of all the soap, towel, dry everywhere thoroughly. Don't touch anything. Turn off the tap with your elbow. Paper towel into the bin. There we go, hands nice and clean.