Journal club tip - a new 2022 paper
Alcohol-based hand rubs have become popular as a pre-surgical hand preparation. Alcohol hand rubs can be better tolerated in terms of reducing dermatitis. They also take less time which has been shown to increase compliance. Most of the literature around surgical hand preps is from our human counterparts, so it is always nice when the veterinary world publishes on this specifically. The recent paper of interest to us is 'Comparative antimicrobial efficacy of 4 surgical hand-preparation procedures prior to application of an alcohol-based hand rub in veterinary students' Billas et al 2022 Vet Surg. My take home from this paper, was that prior to applying your alcohol based hand rub, you need to clean your hands for 60 seconds with soap, then they need to be thoroughly dry prior to applying the alcohol rub. The alcohol hand-rub is then applied according to the product-specific manufacturer's recommendations. It is unclear from this paper, and other veterinary literature, if you need to perform the 60 second hand clean for just the first scrub of the day, or every scrub of the day. Because of the work we do, I perform a 60 second hand clean with soap for the first procedure of the day, then a 30 second clean for subsequent scrubs (+ the 90 second alcohol hand-rub every time). We have timers next to the scrub solutions, to ensure accuracy with the timings.
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