Hand washing is, of course, a major concern in the healthcare setting. Too often, though, the infection control campaigns that hospitals and large organizations role out are boring, dry, or even counter-productive (when using negative social proof – “Only 40% of our physicians are using proper hand washing techniques”).

If you really want to control infection, improve hand washing technique, increase compliance, etc… then stop being so stuffy about it. You can be boring or you can be effective.
If you want effective infection control, try something people will remember.

Feel free to use this image in your talks and presentations (as long as you include the attribution to GiggleMed.com). Just right click on the image & choose “Save As…” (PC) or “Save Image As…” (Mac). By the way, watch for the new GiggleMed.com exclusive members only area. Coming very soon. (Why am I mentioning it here? (1) To get all of the people asking me about it off of my back, (2) You will have access to hundreds of downloads like this one for use in your presentations, (3) Marketers tell me I need to build anticipation, and (4) I’m thinking up some awesome prizes for members.)

Check out these hilarious infection control humor gifts:

Courtesy of NYMC Follies 2011, here is a very well done parody of the movie Inception. This time, of course, involving the bowels.

Intussusception was performed by medical students at New York Medical College. They shot the complete trailer in one day.

It’s clean (well, as clean as intussusception could possibly be). It’s funny. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats. Check it out:

Funny medical music parody of life with a hernia by Weird Al Yankovic. Especially funny for medical professionals because he actually covers quite a bit of relevant material.

You can see other funny medical humor versions of songs here:

Medical humor print captures the reality of the first twenty minutes of a hospital admission. Feel free to use this image in your talks and presentations (as long as you include the attribution to GiggleMed.com). Just right click on the image & choose “Save As…” (PC) or “Save Image As…” (Mac)

Hospital acquired infection, healthcare associated infection… the name keeps changing, but who cares what we call it (as long as we keep the abbreviation the same – HAI – for the sake of The Literature and all of these signs we’ve made).

Healthcare associated infection is, of course, a huge concern. Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-associated infections (central lines, Foleys, etc), C. diff, MRSA, and many others (here’s a HAI list from the CDC).

At GiggleMed.com, we applaud the efforts of Kimberly-Clark Corporation in creating the HAI Watchdog Community (but not so much in the sturdiness of the Scott toilet paper my wife bought in bulk from Sam’s… that’s a gripe for another day) as it seems to be one of the better efforts at reducing such infections without instilling fear in the masses that we’re being invaded.

But of course, we think one of the best ways to educate people and influence them to change for the better, is through humor. So naturally, we changed some of their signs around:

We also like to use such efforts to shamelessly plug our educational medical humor/humorous medical education products:

Check out these (Not-So Funny) HAI resources:

• HAI Watchdog Community
• Tools to raise HAI awareness at your facility
• HAI list from the CDC
• More coming soon…

Disclaimer: GiggleMed.com has absolutely no financial relationship with Kimberly-Clark or any other large corporation (yet). But if they (or any of their competitors) would like to ask us about co-branding our Bugs on Scrubs text, we’d certainly consider it :) Hint, hint… nudge, nudge… wink, wink.

This bench sits in front of a hospital, right next to the GI lab. This happens to be the bench by the drop-off and pick up site for elderly patients too.

Quite naturally, I blame the Joint Commission. After all, they’re the ones who make us toss our expired GoLytely. The stuff still works… here’s proof: