Higienização das mãos durante pandemia Covid-19: impactos sobre os profissionais de enfermagem

Abstract

Hand hygiene is essential for everyone, whose absence or ineffective washing has consequences for patients and everyone in general. With the COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing proved to be much more than a good health practice: it is also an ally of professionals, aiming to minimize further damage to public health, hindering or inhibiting cross-contamination/infection, in a practical and sustainable way. Thus, we sought to analyze through an integrative review on the practice of hand hygiene in the time of a pandemic, through a literature review of the last five years (2018 to 2023), in the databases of LILACS, SciELO, Google Scholar and PubMed, seeking to answer the benefits of the practice of hand hygiene in the hospital environment, identifying the challenges, potentialities and difficulties of nursing in hand hygiene. The results indicate that basic hand washing does not rule out other methods used during the pandemic, but becomes a strong ally in the fight against co-infections and other Health Care-Related Infections (HAIs). Interventions to rescue and improve this millenary practice must be elaborated by the nursing team and passed on to other professionals, with the intention that everyone prioritizes and realizes how this practice of hand hygiene can be a sustainable and economical way to inhibit infections.