Emojis are increasingly used in the place of language worldwide, conveying nonverbal communication cues and other subtleties present in face-to-face communication that are lost when put into writing, and proving to exert a direct effect on readers’ moods. They have enabled users from different countries to communicate in a standardized way with single compact characters circumventing language barriers. They became so commonplace that the Oxford dictionary announced “”作为2015年年度单词。

与培训医院清洁人员使用的详细材料相比

Internet access to medical information has gone far beyond reading sources as we are witnessing more interactive communication methods being introduced each day. In a recent study, new emojis were designed and the possibility of using emojis to depict clinical signs and symptoms was evaluated.

Medical emojis have a great potential to gain popularity on digital platforms as the Internet is an integral part of both healthcare workers’ and patients’ lives.

Emojis in infection prevention and control

The implementation of infection prevention and control (IPC) programs is recognised as a global health priority, and a failure to achieve an adequate level of IPC harms patients around the world.

最近，通过互联网和社交媒体，在人群中，传染病的趋势已迅速检测到。

Understanding interactions between a disease and public emotions represented by emojis could be effective to both predict and ameliorate the public’s fear to infectious diseases.

The example of hand hygiene

医疗保健相关的感染被认为是对患者安全的威胁；用酒精基摩擦的手动卫生在全球范围内被认为是IPC的基石，用于预防与医疗保健相关的感染。

尽管手卫生是一个简单的过程，但尽管干预了，但全球依从性水平仍然令人震惊。表情符号可能有助于弥合基于口头文本和非语言的面对面互动之间与手动卫生有关的巨大差距。

The第一个研究为了评估表情符号对手卫生的影响，表明表情符号可以通过提供视觉提示并防止何时需要进行健忘，从而增强医院的手动卫生。此外，手动卫生性能后表情符号变为表情符号，通过提供患者房间的即时反馈来增强手动卫生行为。

There are currently several hand gesture emojis available, however there is no specific for hand washing, hand-rubbing or hand-rub. The act of

cleaning hands could be only demonstrated using a sequence of any of the existing hand emojis with the emoji, which is more complicated than using a single emoji. For example, emojis may be interpreted as applauding the use of soap and they may not directly demonstrate hand washing with soap. The development of specific hand hygiene-related emojis will enable health professionals to communicate more specifically regarding their discoveries and concerns in this field.

与培训医院清洁人员使用的详细材料相比，使用简化的手动卫生提醒可能更有益，耗时较少。

The general public, including patients suffering from healthcare-associated infections, might be able to easily share and communicate the problems they have faced, as they could be better heard globally using different emojis. Furthermore, hand hygiene-related emojis on social media could regularly remind us to protect ourselves against healthcare-associated infections, and the spread of influenza or antimicrobial resistance.

Emojis may empower IPC in different aspects such as raising awareness with no language barrier, educating people to adopt healthy behaviors, and enhancing surveillance systems to monitor infectious diseases. It is recommended to evaluate the relevance and appropriateness of the current set of emojis to use for hand hygiene promotion in order to harness the potential beneficial impact of these symbols. Medical emojis that are standardized as a new category of emojis offer much hope for the future, especially in the field of IPC.