Key takeaways:
- As a part of a pilot program, sufferers and guests carried out audits of HCW hand hygiene compliance.
- Throughout this system, compliance elevated to a mean of 92%.
ORLANDO — A hand hygiene intervention, which inspired sufferers and guests to the collaborating items to carry out audits of well being care employees, efficiently improved compliance, researchers discovered.
“After I began my new job at Brown College Well being, one of many massive priorities from management was hand hygiene,” Kevin Gibas, MD, MPH, affiliate medical director of epidemiology and an infection prevention at Rhode Island Hospital and assistant professor of medication at The Warren Alpert Medical Faculty of Brown College, informed Healio.
Utilizing supplied QR codes, sufferers and guests got the chance to report HCW hand hygiene compliance. Picture: Adobe Inventory.
Compliance charges ranged from 60% to 70%, however the hospital system’s aim was 100%, in line with Gibas.
“We set a threshold of 90% and, as a technique to work towards that, we needed to attempt some novel applications,” Gibas stated.
One of many applications was a platform employees used to enter hand hygiene observations and monitor compliance. Gibas defined that this system additionally had public-facing entry, with a hyperlink or a QR code giving sufferers and guests the flexibility to log audits and monitor what they had been seeing when it comes to hand hygiene compliance amongst well being care employees (HCWs).
In keeping with the examine, which was introduced on the SHEA Spring assembly, the researchers piloted this program in a single outpatient clinic and 5 inpatient items throughout 5 months. (August-December). Throughout this time, a poster with program data and a QR code linked to the audit kind was positioned in every room and/or handed to sufferers and guests. Sufferers had been instructed to scan the QR code to entry the audit kind which included three questions relating to which location they had been at, if the HCWs carried out hand hygiene and if the affected person/customer can be snug asking employees to carry out hand hygiene.
Sufferers and guests recorded 98 audits all through this system — 72 from the outpatient clinic and 26 from the inpatient items.
The affected person statement audits confirmed that the HCW hand hygiene compliance fee averaged 92% within the inpatient items throughout 5 months, with the bottom fee being recorded in October (60%) and the very best fee (100%) being recorded through the different 4 months assessed.
Within the outpatient items, the bottom fee (83%) was additionally recorded in October, whereas 100% compliance was recorded in September, November and December. The common HCW hand hygiene compliance fee was additionally 92% within the items.
Mixed, this confirmed an total common compliance of 92% throughout each the inpatient and outpatient items through the pilot program, in line with the examine.
Primarily based on these outcomes, the researchers concluded that hand hygiene compliance elevated and remained above preintervention ranges after the beginning of schooling and implementation of the affected person/customer hand hygiene auditing program.
“Bringing sufferers and guests into the fold of hand hygiene not solely makes them really feel extra empowered to take part but in addition serves as a reminder that interventions that enable sufferers to present suggestions and permit sufferers to have consciousness of what the very best practices are, is a really efficient instrument,” Gibas stated. “We’ve been constantly at 88% to 89% compliance, so, we’ve had sustained enhancements.”
For extra data:
Kevin Gibas, MD, MPH, may be reached at kgibas@brownhealth.org.
Sources/Disclosures
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Gibas Ok, et al. Summary 254. Introduced at: SHEA Spring; April 27-30, 2025; Orlando.
Disclosures:
Gibas studies no related monetary disclosures.
