Healthcare Academy Practice Exam

Hand hygiene breaks the way a pathogen is spread from one person to another. When hands are clean, the transfer of microbes between people or from contaminated surfaces to a person is greatly reduced, effectively stopping direct and indirect transmission. This interruption targets the transmission link in the chain of infection, which is all about how the agent moves from the source to a new host.

Hand hygiene doesn’t directly stop the pathogen from leaving its reservoir (portal of exit) or entering a new host (portal of entry), nor does it change a person’s susceptibility. It simply removes or kills organisms on the hands before they can be passed along, making transmission much less likely.