Patients should now ask doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers if they have cleaned their hands before treating them, the Health Service Executive advised yesterday.
The HSE said it acknowledged the question may seem difficult or challenging, but since good hand hygiene does so much to halt the transfer of infection from patient to patient, "no health worker would object to reassuring the people in their care that they are getting the clean pair of hands they deserve".
The message to patients to ask healthcare staff if their hands are clean will be driven home in a new advertising campaign to begin today.
Its aim is to drive down rates of MRSA and other such infections.