At present, people generally follow the sequence of six step washing method of the World Health Organization, which is more consistent with the habit of washing hands, and summarizes some simple and easy to remember oral decisions to avoid forgetting some steps. The six step hand washing method recommended by who focuses on some parts that are easy to be ignored in general hand washing methods (such as finger joints, thumbs, fingertips, etc.), to ensure that the hand disinfectant can be evenly covered on the watch surface, so as to ensure the effectiveness of hand washing, but does not emphasize that it must be carried out in the order of six step rubbing steps.

 

A recent study evaluated the effect of who six step hand disinfection sequence adjustment, that is, after applying hand disinfectant, the sixth step "rubbing fingertips" was carried out first, and other frequency sequence remained unchanged. It was found that the "fingertip priority method" could reduce the number of bacterial colonies in the hands of medical staff more. The reason may be that hospital staff often can't carry out six steps of hand washing in daily work, even few medical staff can complete six steps, and the amount of hand disinfectant is insufficient, resulting in insufficient amount of hand disinfectant to fully disinfect the fingertip when rubbing the fingertip finally, while the fingertip is the most serious part of hand pollution. There is evidence that fingertips play an important role in cross transmission. Although the fingertip priority method can significantly reduce the bacterial load of fingertips, the clinical differences caused by it still need more research.

 

Therefore, the author believes that it is more important to strictly implement the correct rubbing of each part than whether it is necessary to follow the sequence when following the six step hand washing method recommended by who. It is suggested to pay attention to the fingertip decontamination, which may be the key to reduce cross communication.