MRSA
Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus
Prevent Infection
It’s in your hands
Give yourself, your family and fellow veterans a priceless gift. Make the VA a safer place. Everyone who enters our VA can help prevent medicine resistant infections. That means all of us!
The most important thing you can do is Wash or Clean Your Hands!
The two best ways to wash or clean your hands are:
1. Wash with soap and water when your hands look or feel dirty:
• Make lather with soap and warm water.
• Rub palms, back of hands, and between fingers.
• Rub for at least 15 seconds.
• Rinse and dry well.
2. Use a waterless hand cleaner with alcohol when your hands do not look or feel dirty:
• Follow directions on the cleaner for the amount of cleaner to use and how long to rub. Use enough hand cleaner to cover both sides of your hands. Ask the hospital staff for help if you do not understand the directions.
• Rub the cleaner on the palms, back of hands, and between fingers. Keep rubbing until your hands are dry.
Infection Prevention: It is up to all of us!
It’s okay to ask health care providers if they have cleaned their hands.
Vital facts to remember:
• Our hands spread the germs that cause infections.
• Our hands pick up germs when we touch our mouths, noses, other people, and things like chairs, beds, doors, and food.
• Germs are very small and we can’t see them pass from our hands to other people and things.
• That is why hand washing/cleaning is so important.
Wash/clean your hands before:
• Eating or preparing food.
• Caring for someone sick.
• Touching your sores, wounds, or cuts.
• Holding or feeding a child.
Wash/clean your hands after:
• Going to the bathroom.
• Caring for someone sick.
• Caring for yourself.
• Touching or blowing your nose.
• Coughing or sneezing.
In fact, hand washing/cleaning is the very best way to stop the spread of germs from person to person. To prevent infections, the VA needs your help.
We say “clean” as well as “wash” because hospitals use a new type of germ killing waterless hand cleaner that does not need soap. Washing or cleaning your hands is easy. It takes less than a minute. Do it the right way—at the right time!
Please be sure to:
• Remind staff, family, and visitors to wash or clean their hands.
• Locate hand washing facilities and hand cleaning stations when you are at the VA.
• Notify staff when bathrooms need cleaning or supplies are low.
For more information, contact:
