The document provides background information for a student's co-op placement assignment to make recommendations to increase hand washing compliance rates at London Health Sciences Centre hospitals. It outlines the "Just Clean Your Hands" program that aims to prevent infection transmission. It discusses compliance data that shows room for improvement and varying rates between occupations. It identifies challenges like time constraints and obstacles to overcome like inconvenient sinks. The student is asked to write a persuasive essay for student nurses and volunteers, accompanied by a visual, to increase hand washing rates.

1. Assignment 2
“Just Clean your hands”
Background
You are
UWO coop placement student
Making recs for plan of action
Hospital administrators will have ultimate approval
Audience (identify initial, primary, and secondary)
LHSC – London Health Science Centre (hospitals in this region)
Sarah Noble – your supervisor – will review
Student Nurses and Volunteers
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “The
single most important means of preventing the spread of
infection”
Program in place since 2007 to deal with
HAI – health-care associated Infections
Antibiotic-resistant organisms
Compliance: 2008-2010
Progress, but need for improvement
Varying compliance rates
1. Moments (steps)
2. Groups (occupations)
See stats – they tell a story (what is it?)

2. Situation
LHSC = University, Victoria, and South Street Hospitals
14,295 employees
Potential contact w/patients
Doctors, Dentists, Midwives
Hospital employees: nurses, medical students, other students
Volunteers
Visitors
See longer list
Compliance Definition
When to Clean Hands – Four Moments
Moment 1 – before contact
Moment 2 – before aseptic procedures
Moment 3 – after body fluid exposure
Moment 4 – after contact w/patient or with her/his enviro
See How – methods, duration for target audience
See Rates of compliance for target audience
Non-compliance – the “Unexpected and troubling”
20-30% non-compliance
Data collected though direct observation
i.e. being observed did not prompt compliance
Variances b/w and among
Physicians, nurses, others (housekeeping, dieticians, therapists)
Varying rates compliance w/specific moments
i.e. partial compliance: how do you raise compliance?
Common Ground & Challenges

3. Common Ground
Who would disagree that washing saves lives, recovery time,
etc.?
Logic – likely no objections to the …
science
argument
Challenges
Meeting ON Ministry of Health and Long Term Care targets
Organizational behaviour
Identified Obstacles: how to overcome?
Washing dozens times/day = time constraints & dry
skin/irritation
Location sinks dispensers inconvenient
Fear of speaking out
Religion and alcohol based rubs
Visitors unaware protocols
Discipline – no consequences
Subcultures and attitudes
Habit/perception
Consider
Carrot or stick?
Incentives & rewards vs negative consequences
Disincentives
Can impediments be removed? For which groups?
Are changes expensive?
Is tracking chip really a good idea?
Study admits that compliance did not improve even when
participants knew they were observed
Nurses did comply more than others – what are the real
obstacles for them?

4. Volunteers – how would it work?
Plan and constraints
Plan – how to increase compliance?
Incentives?
Consequences?
Who monitors and how?
Compliance-checking chip?
Fixed budget: what is it?
Remember
Scope of your task is limited to
Info in the case study
Your aim to inform and persuade
Inform Noble of key facts & issues
Persuade supervisor of info/arguments most relevant to Primary
audience
Use at least one visual to support your argument
What kinds of visuals for theses groups?
Grading criteria
* Purpose of visual(s) clear
* Visual useful and necessary (not just “eye candy”)
* Well designed (see CRAP design principles)
Headings & Fonts: simple, clear
Margins: jagged or full justification?
* Visual(s) integrated into document
Integrated visually (good use of negative positive space, wrap
around text, etc.)

5. Referenced in text
Titles indicate purpose
Source cited
Option 2 – Poster with explanatory text
Since this is not a design course choose this option only if you
are confident that you can effectively:
Apply CRAP principles
Integrate appropriate iconography, font, images for target
audience & message
Explain your choices to Noble (i.e. persuade her that this poster
is necessary and effective for target audience)
Just Clean Your Hands sample essay
Just Clean Your Hands is the program that aims at the
promotion of cleaning hands by the health care and support staff
in the London Health Sciences Center. The program focuses on
the health care and support staff, which is supposed to bear the
full responsibility for the maintenance of the clean and healthy
environment in the clinic. However, the problem is that the
London Health Sciences Center still faces the problem of the
low hands cleaning rate that puts under a threat the health of
health care professionals, support staff and clients of the clinic.
Therefore, the introduction of the Just Clean Your Hands
program is essential for the clinic to enhance its quality of
services delivered to patients and to secure the health care
environment from spreading infections and diseases caused by
unclean hands or poor hands cleaning culture of the clinic’s
staff.
Just Clean Your Hands is the program that aims at the
maintenance of the healthy environment in the London Health
Sciences Center’s medical and support staff. The maintenance

6. of the healthy environment is crucial for the delivery of
efficient health care services. This program focuses on the
training of the staff how to clean hands and to develop the
culture of cleaning hands among health care professionals and
support staff. In such a way, the program will create the healthy
environment in the clinic through the training of the staff and
developing right habits of cleaning their hands.
Otherwise, there is a high risk of the contamination of patients
as well as health care professionals and support staff working in
the center. Unclean hands of the health care and support staff is
one of the major risk factor for inpatients as well as for the
staff. Unclean hands are source of danger and high risk of
spreading infections and contamination of patients and health
care professionals along with the support staff. At the moment,
the London Health Sciences Center has the poor hand washing
compliant rate. Therefore, the center faced the high risk of
spreading infections and disease because of the poor hand
washing culture. The poor hand cleaning culture puts under a
threat the health of patients and the health care and support
staff.
Even though there are objective factors that cause the poor hand
washing rate, such as the work overload, but the health care and
support staff should respect hand washing standards because it
is the matter of hygiene and health of the staff and clients.
Health care professionals and support staff should be aware of
the importance of cleaning hands to secure themselves and
patients from numerous threats and risks, which are particularly
high in the health care environment, where the staff and patients
are constantly exposed to the risk of the contamination and
regular and through cleaning of hands is essential to keep the
staff and patients from the contamination by some infectious
disease or developing other health problems that may be
transmitted via unclean hands.
In such a situation, the simple cleaning hands will help to
reduce the risk of spreading infections and health problems
within the clinical environment will be helpful. In addition,

7. cleaning hands helps to protect clients from deteriorating their
condition under the impact of infections brought into the
clinical environment because of unclean hands. The cleaning of
hands does not need many efforts from the part of health care
professionals and support staff. They should just clean their
hands regularly and throughout and that is what Just Clean Your
Hands is trying to teach them. Furthermore, cleaning hands is
the simple but cost-efficient method because it allows saving
costs of the health care organization because simple measure
that cost next to nothing, cleaning hands, can prevent the
development of serious health conditions that will require costly
and serious treatment.
At the same time, it is worth mentioning the fact that often the
problem is not the negligence of the health care and support
staff that leads to their failure to clean their hands regularly.
Instead, the problem often is the wrong hands cleaning
technique. In this regard, Just Clean Your Hands program offers
the detailed recommendations and training of the staff to clean
hands right that improves the quality of hands cleaning and
makes it really efficient. As a result, health care professionals
and support staff clean their hands effectively and, thus, secure
themselves, their colleagues and clients. Therefore, the
implementation of the Just Clean Your Hands program will help
the health care and support staff of the London Health Sciences
Center to resolve the problem of the low hands cleaning rate
and improve the health care environment in the clinic.
Thus, Just Clean Your Hands is an effective program that has to
be implemented into the London Health Sciences Center to
improve the hands cleaning culture of the staff and to secure not
only the personnel of the clinic but also clients.
Writing 2111F/G Distance Studies

8. Assignment #2
Due Midnight Friday Week 9
“Just Clean Your Hands” (Persuasive Message with Visual)
Background and Assignment
Using the information and exhibits from the “Just Clean Your
Hands” case study, write
an essay (MLA format) of up to 1200 words that persuades
Student Nurses and
Volunteers to increase their rate of hand-washing compliance.
This must also include a
75-word memo of transmittal to Sarah Noble, telling her what
you are sending her.
Presumably, she will shape your essay into a pamphlet that will
be included in welcome
packages for new workers.
You will be graded on style, grammar, clarity, organization,
accuracy, and concision, and
also on the persuasiveness of your argument. Consequently, you
should consider these
questions: which points from the case will be most convincing
and most relevant to your
target audience? How will you catch your audience’s attention?
How will you structure
your body paragraphs for logic, coherence, and readability?
What tone should you adopt?
How will you appeal to ethos, pathos, and/or logos? Which of
the three should you

9. emphasize?
You must also create a visual to accompany your essay:
• Option 1: Design a small promotional poster for the “Just
Clean Your Hands”
program. Your poster should include a memorable balance of
text and image,
adhering to the principles of good document design discussed in
lecture and our
text. If you use any images that are not yours, you must provide
the source under
your poster.
• Option 2: Using information from the case study (or from
recent and relevant
research), create a graph which dynamically and memorably
illustrates one of
your main points. You must effectively integrate this graph into
the body of your
essay.
Resources: Locker/Findlay Chapter 4 and Unit 6 lecture notes;
Units 7 and 8 (readings
and lecture notes); Assignment Case: “Just Clean Your Hands”
Primary Audience for Assignment #2: Student Nurses and
Volunteers at LHSC; Sarah
Noble
Assignment Format: essay (MLA format) with visual (graph or
small promo poster) and
memo of transmittal

10. IMPORTANT NOTE: if you use ANY material from the case (or
other sources), you
MUST cite it properly. All direct quotations MUST be in
quotation marks, followed by a
citation; paraphrased passages must include a clear reference to
the source
Word Count: up to 1200 words for essay and memorandum
Due Midnight Friday Week 9
Assignment Value: 25% of Final Grade