How to wash your hands properly?
Thorough hand washing is especially important after potential contact with pathogens. For example, after going to the toilet, after sneezing or coughing into your hand, after changing your child’s diaper, after contact with animals or sick people, and after contact with waste or raw meat.
To protect yourself and others, you should also wash your hands before cooking. Thorough hand washing is also advisable before applying cosmetics or medicines, treating wounds or generally handling sick people.
Hand washing – instructions:
- Wet your hands under running water. Choose a water temperature that is comfortable for you (the temperature does not affect the germ count).
- Use enough soap, preferably a pH-neutral soap, because it protects the acid mantle of the skin. It does not have to be an antibacterial soap – it does not influence the germ count.
- Spread the page thoroughly. Scrub the palms and backs of the hands first. If you interlace the fingers, you also clean the spaces between the fingers. Do not forget the fingertips, fingernails and thumbs.
- Take your time to thoroughly clean your hands.
- Rinse hands under running water at the end.
- Dry your hands thoroughly. No area should be damp anymore.
Change towels in your own household regularly and wash them at 60 degrees.
When you wash your hands in public washrooms, you should – if you have a choice – use liquid soap instead of bars of soap. That’s because it’s more hygienic! It is best to operate the water tap with your elbow and use disposable towels to dry off. This will keep your freshly cleaned hands clean.
How long should you wash your hands?
If you only hold your hands under the tap for a few seconds and don’t distribute the soap properly, you’re hardly protecting yourself from infection. To really reduce the number of germs on your hands, you should invest 20 to 30 seconds in washing your hands. That’s about as long as it takes to sing the entire Happy Birthday twice. If your hands are very dirty, it can be longer.
How does proper hand washing work with children?
Washing your hands properly is something you have to learn. The same rules apply to children as to adults. But how do you get little ones to wash their hands properly?
The Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA) recommends that the best way to do this is through play. For example, toddlers learn when and how long they should wash their hands with the help of rituals and songs sung together.
Older children can, for example, learn the importance of soap when washing their hands with the help of a simple experiment. To do this, put some black pepper in a glass bowl filled with water. Then let the children dip a finger in – once with and once without soap. The germs in the form of the pepper slide off the soaped finger, while they stick to the non-soaped finger.
There are colorful posters for kindergartens and schools that explain the rules of hand washing to children in just a few steps, with colorful pictures and simple language. Of course, these can also be hung up at home. They are available free of charge from the BzgA website, for example. This way, handwashing will soon become a matter of course for children.
Disinfect hands?
Doctors and nurses must not only wash their hands, but also disinfect them. This is the only way to prevent the transmission of life-threatening hospital germs. Many people now also use disinfectants as standard at home. But is that really necessary, or is it enough to wash your hands properly?
What is certain is that people who have to pay very close attention to hand hygiene (e.g. when caring for sick relatives) disinfect their hands better. This dries out the skin less than hand washing.
When and how to disinfect your hands properly, you will learn in the article Hand disinfection.
