Patient education: How to wash your hands (The Basics)

Why is it important to wash my hands? — Handwashing is one of the best ways to stop the spread of many infections. When you wash your hands, you remove dirt, germs, chemicals, and other things from your skin.

Lots of different germs can cause infection, and you can have germs on your hands without knowing it. Washing or cleaning your hands often is the most important thing you can do to keep from getting sick or spreading illness to others.

When should I wash my hands? — Always wash your hands with soap and clean water when they are visibly dirty. But it's also important to wash your hands at certain times even if they don't look dirty.

Always wash your hands:

●Before and after you prepare food

●Before you eat

●As often as possible while you are sick, but especially after you sneeze, blow your nose, or cough

●After you use the bathroom, change a diaper, or help someone use the bathroom

●Before you touch your face, eyes, nose, or mouth

●Before and after you treat a cut or wound

●After you touch a pet, handle animal food or waste, or handle garbage

●Before and after you care for someone who is sick, visit someone in a hospital, or go to a doctor

●After you touch things that lots of other people touch, like handrails, door handles, elevator and ATM buttons, drinking fountains, and grocery carts

How should I wash my hands? — Handwashing removes germs and dirt from your hands. But it's important to wash your hands correctly to get them completely clean (figure 1):

●Wet your hands with clean warm or cold running water.

●Apply soap, and lather well. Both liquid soap and bar soap work equally well. If you use bar soap, allow it to drain on a rack between uses.

●Rub your hands together, and scrub them well. The friction helps the soap fight the germs.

●Scrub the palms and backs of your hands, your wrists, between your fingers, your thumbs, the tips of your fingers, and under your nails.

●Keep rubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds. Try singing a song like "Happy Birthday" or the "ABCs" 2 times to make sure that you wash for long enough.

●Rinse your hands well under the clean running water.

●Dry your hands using a disposable towel or clean towel, or let them air dry.

Can I use hand sanitizer instead of soap and water? — It is better to wash your hands with soap and water if possible. But if you are not near a sink, you can also clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer instead (figure 2). A sanitizer that has at least 60% alcohol in it will kill many germs found on your skin.

How should I use hand sanitizer? — Hand sanitizers should have at least 60% alcohol. Read the label to know how much hand sanitizer to use.

●Apply the hand sanitizer to the palm of 1 hand.

●Rub your hands together.

●Rub the sanitizer all over your hands and fingers until your hands are dry. Stop rubbing only when your hands are dry.

●Rub the sanitizer on the palms and backs of your hands, between your fingers, on your thumbs, under and around your nails, and on your wrists.

●Do not wipe off the hand sanitizer before it dries. It might not work as well if you do.

What else should I know?

●If possible, remove rings and other jewelry before you wash your hands.

●Some public restrooms do not have automatic paper towel dispensers or faucets. If so, get a paper towel before you wash your hands. After you use it to dry your hands, use the paper towel to turn off the faucet.

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Patient education: Lowering the risk of spreading infection (The Basics)