The Effect of Hand Sanitizer and Hand Soap Use on Infection Control

Infection control plays a major role in keeping patients and healthcare providers healthy as well as preventing them from contracting preventable diseases/infections. As future nurses it is our job to stop the transmission of preventable diseases/infections from occurring by partaking in proper hand hygiene methods such as through the use of alcohol based hand sanitizer or antimicrobial hand soap. The use of hand soap as well as hand sanitizer helps break the chain of transmission because you are cleaning the mode of transmission allowing the chain to be broken. Both alcohol based hand sanitizer and antimicrobial hand soap have pros and cons to them, however, there are certain circumstances where one is required over the other. For instance hand soap is required when hands are visibly soiled as well as contaminated by blood or bodily fluids. Hand sanitizers are typically used when there is no visible soilage of the hands.