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If You’re Not Using the Six-Step Hand Washing Method, You’re Gross

You’re a walking germ.
Image: Flickr/Ernesto Andrade

Thanks to having worked in a large, open plan office, I'm now convinced that pretty much everyone is a disgusting, walking germ-vessel. The countless times I saw people exit bathroom stalls without so much as running water over their hands instilled into me a fear of poop-bacteria accidentally coming into contact with my own freshly-washed fingers. I got sick approximately 50,000 times last year.

Much to my delight, the World Health Organization (WHO) has come up with a six-step way to ensure your hands are as clean and germ-free as possible.

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A new study published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology compared WHO's six-step method to the three-step method the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises hospital workers use to minimize bacteria on their hands. WHO's method was superior.

Here's how to do it: rub your palms against each other; rub the back of each hand against your palms; rub your palms together with your fingers interlaced; rub your palms against each other while your fingers are interlocked; rub your fingers around each of your thumbs; and rub each palm with the tips your fingers.

Image: Community Eye Health Journal

What the study's authors found was the six-step hand washing technique was more microbiologically effective in reducing median bacterial counts than the three-step method, among a test group comprised of 42 physicians and 78 nurses working in an urban hospital.

While this isn't terribly surprising news—more steps should, theoretically, mean more cleanliness—what the researchers also discovered was that healthcare workers were much less compliant with the longer, more intensive hand washing method.

It takes approximately 42.5 seconds to scrub your dirty mitts using WHO's technique, versus only 35 seconds using the CDC's.

"Only 65 percent of providers completed the entire hand hygiene process despite participants having instructions on the technique in front of them and having their technique observed," said the study's lead author Dr. Jacqui Reilly, professor of infection prevention and control at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland, in a statement.

A few years ago, a study out of the University of Maryland School of Medicine revealed that nearly half of the hospital rooms tested by researchers were found to harbor multidrug-resistant bacteria capable of living on surfaces for a very long time. The study didn't propose which came first, the bacteria or the patients carrying that particular bacteria, but it did drum up concern over hospital workers' hygiene habits.

So the suggestion that some health workers may be cutting corners on cleanliness isn't an unwarranted concern.

As WHO states in their healthcare hygiene guidelines, hand cleanliness is the primary measure for reducing infections in both doctors and patients. It's also the simplest thing a person can do make sure their hands are germ-free.

So there you have it. If the six-step hand washing method is good enough for doctors fighting against infectious diseases, then it's good enough for your dirty office fingers. Now go forth and be clean.