Hospital staff in NHS Ayrshire & Arran have failed to meet the national standards for hygiene in 2022-23, it was revealed at the board meeting on Monday.

Board chair Lesley Bowie said this meant staff are not always washing their hands or putting on gel while working.

Marie Burns, board member and leader of North Ayrshire Council, said: “With everything in this paper, it might seem like a really basic question but why are we not meeting the  national standards for hygiene?

“Does that mean more people are not washing their hands when they are supposed to? It’s something that is really basic.”

Tracey Cooper, nurse consultant (infection prevention and control), said: “We are not quite meeting the national standards for hand hygiene of 95 per cent.

"We are working to commence a piece of work early in 2024 looking to really re-focus on hand hygiene and bare below the elbows so we achieve excellence in our hand hygiene.

“We are over 90 per cent there so the vast majority of our staff are bare below the elbows as we would expect them to be and cleaning their hands every time we would expect them to be.

“This is a relatively small number of people but one of the big things we have picked up is the number of staff wearing things like wrist watches which breaches that standard hence the re-focused piece of work in 2024 to make sure that everyone is clear on what is the expectation and that there will be a continued audit to monitor improvement.

“It’s not that we have a massive culture of people not washing their hands but a lot of it is wearing watches or rings, or the odd human error lapse because of course we are all human.”

All healthcare facilities and component parts such as wards, treatment rooms, corridors, etc are expected to be at least 90 per cent compliant with the requirements set out nationally.

Meanwhile, NHS Ayrshire & Arran has met the national standard for both domestic service and estates.

Compliance for NHS Ayrshire & Arran Scotland domestic services was 95.33 per cent compared with the Scottish average of 95.3 per cent and for estates services it was 96.96 per cent against the national average of  96.4 per cent.