Alaska Native Medical Center: Hand Hygiene
Alaska Native Medical Center was looking for a new way to encourage hand washing in its facility. As you enter any large facility, you’re constantly being barraged by wayfinding and informational signage. Putting signs on the wall to encourage hand hygiene is not enough to grab people’s attention and get them to act.
So how do we do it? Not with witty posters, but with real-world germs. Vinyl clings on the floor in the restroom proclaim:
It’s no dirtier than your hands.
This message is displayed across garbage cans, on high-traffic floors and hallways. It’s everywhere you wouldn’t want your hands to be, and it’s spoken loud and clear. Along with this startlingly visual and dimensionally effective message, we include a brief bit of informational copy:
Take 15 seconds to wash your hands before and after every
patient encounter, and you’ll help save 20,000 more lives a year.
Overall, this is an easy message to understand and an impossible one to ignore. Also, because it’s clever and (because of its placement) somewhat lighthearted, it’s a campaign that gets people asking, “How clean are your hands?”
So how do we do it? Not with witty posters, but with real-world germs. Vinyl clings on the floor in the restroom proclaim:
It’s no dirtier than your hands.
This message is displayed across garbage cans, on high-traffic floors and hallways. It’s everywhere you wouldn’t want your hands to be, and it’s spoken loud and clear. Along with this startlingly visual and dimensionally effective message, we include a brief bit of informational copy:
Take 15 seconds to wash your hands before and after every
patient encounter, and you’ll help save 20,000 more lives a year.
Overall, this is an easy message to understand and an impossible one to ignore. Also, because it’s clever and (because of its placement) somewhat lighthearted, it’s a campaign that gets people asking, “How clean are your hands?”
