Principles, Polices and Issues in Public Health, [Student ID] 1

Action Plan
Principles, Policies and Issues
PUB017-6
Principles, Polices and Issues in Public Health, [Student ID] 2

Table of Contents
 Principles, Polices and Issues in Public Health, [Student ID] 3

Action Plan

Introduction
This paper aims to assess a public health programme or policy developed or designed to
bring a change. In this paper, personal and professional needs of this unit will be discussed in
addition to a public health issue in terms of policies and ideologies is hospital acquired infection.
An action plan will be developed in this paper for designing an outline for a briefing paper. The
impact of relevant policies or programmes will be assessed on the prevalence of hospital
acquired infections in the UK, which will aid in developing the assumptions for the action plan.

Personal and Professional Learning Needs

Belonging to the field of public health, it is important that an individual has knowledge
and the skills to identify a public health problem. Afterwards, existing public health interventions
should be assessed considering the underlying ideologies and principles, so that a briefing outline
can be developed for improvement in public health policies.

Public Health Issue

The selected public health issue to address the learning outcomes is hospital acquired
infections (HAIs), also referred to as healthcare associated infections. HAIs can develop as a
result of being in direct contact with the health care setting or from an intervention (for instance,
surgical or medical procedure). Not only patients and their relatives, but physicians are also
exposed to HAIs, significantly affecting their health (Mehta et al. 2014). This is public health
problem which must be tackled to reduce the burden on the health care organisations.

Background
It is commonly observed in the UK that that hospital acquired infections among the
patients after their discharge, which leads to increase in the hospitalisation rate. This increases
the burden on the health care sector in terms of expenditure, as Adams-Howell et al. (2011)
proposed that approximately £700 per year are spent for treating the patients with HAIs. In
England, it has been identified that around 300,000 people per year, who received health care
within the NHS hospitals or clinics, get infected from HAIs. The prevalence rate of HAIs in
hospitals was 6.4% in 2011 in England (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence
[NICE] 2014). The prevalence of these infections represents additional use of resources, decrease
in patient safety, and greater discomfort in patients.
The government has taken actions to control the rate of infection by using a variety of
strategies, for instance, introducing regular targets and assessments, a legal framework, offering
guidance and advice, and financial incentives and sanctions. Moreover, the government also
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targets to raise understanding and awareness about HAIs among general public with the help of
national campaign. The Chief Medial Officer's report in the year 2002 on the subject of
infectious disease strategy recognised the need for improving control measures related to
healthcare associated infections. After this report, the problem of HAIs has become a priority for
the NHS. Since then, a number of action plans, strategies, and policies have been presented by
the Department of Health to minimise the rate of HAI. One of the examples of the initiatives
taken by the government was the introduction of mandatory surveillance of MRSA or meticillin-
resistant Staphylococcus aureus in the year 2001. Furthermore, a target was introduced to reduce
the rate of MRSA infections related to bloodstream by 50% till 2008 within all NHS healthcare
organisations.
HAIs can be prevented by adopting several strategies including environmental cleaning,
use of specific cleaning agents, cleaning of near patient and hand touch sites that are at the risk
of nurturing infections. The World Health organization (WHO) launched a global campaign
"Save lives: Clean your hands" in 2009 to improve hand hygiene in health care (WHO 2017).
This programme demonstrated that hand hygiene is one of the primary strategies to reduce HAIs
and increases patients’ safety. In the UK, "cleanyourhands" is introduced in England and Wales
to promote hand hygiene by NHS.
http://www.npsa.nhs.uk/cleanyourhands/
Key characteristics
The proposed briefing paper belonged to the Key Competency Area of the Faculty of Public
Health. The briefing paper seeks to review the influence of hand hygiene programme designed for
prevention of HAIs.

Theme
The theme of this action plan is to explore the effectiveness of “Cleanyourhand” programme
and its impact on the reduction of HAIs prevalence in the UK. It will target the health care
professionals within the selected NHS settings and investigate the factors that contributed in the
reduction of HAIs prevalence since 2010. The paper will be outlined for the policy makers in the UK
health sector. For this action plan, it will take around 12 weeks and the results will be shared with the
Department of Health.
The action plan will cover the following;
 Cleaning programmes

 Effectiveness of cleaning programmes

 Factors affecting adherence to cleaning strategies

 Prevention of HAIs

 Recommendation and strategies.

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Objective
The objective of this paper is to undertake an investigation on the national programme
"Cleanyourhands" on HAI prevalence rate.

National Policies
The programme “Celanyuorhands” introduced by WHO in 2009 to improve hand hygiene
among health care professionals. In England, Cleanyourhands programme was a part of the 2004
MRSA screening programme. the rate of MRSA infection reduced through this campaign from 1.88
per ten thousand bed-days to 0.91 per ten thousand bed days by 2008 ( McLaws 2015). However,
adherence to hand hygiene is based on several factors such as practice, education, and knowledge. In
addition to the implementation of hand hygiene policies, healthcare organisations also proposed
polices related to the adherence to hand hygiene
(http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/44102/1/9789241597906_eng.pdf).

McLaws, M.L., 2015. The relationship between hand hygiene and health care-associated
infection: it’s complicated. Infection and drug resistance, 8, p.7.
New Initiatives
The initiatives recommended below are associated to bring change with respect to the
findings;
 Locally provide resources to health care organisations for implementation of this programme

 Initiate educational programmes to promote adherence to hand hygiene ad increase

knowledge of the health care professionals
 Involve patients and their relatives also in this initiative because it is public health issue.

Strategies
Involvement of local government in hand hygiene programmes is significant to attain better hand
hygiene among health care professionals through the use of alcohol hand rub and liquid soap.
Conduct sessions in the health care organisation to promote adherence to hand hygiene
Use mass media to promote knowledge among general public.

Impact
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Understanding the impact of Cleanyourhans programme in decreasing the ate of HAIs prevalence.
This will provide an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of the national programme. This
investigation will offer evidence which will presented to the Department of Health
Conclusion
HAIs reduction is a significant public health issues which should be reduced with the help of
appropriate interventions as these infections can be prevented. This action pan provides a
briefing to the health care policy-makers in the UK to improve the policies relate to HAIs and
implement programmes in health care organisations to reduce its prevalence.
Word Count:
World Health Organization, 2017. Clean Care is Safer Care. Available from
http://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/background/en/