Improving healthcare worker hand hygiene adherence before patient contact: A multimodal intervention of hand hygiene practice in Three Japanese tertiary care centers.
J Hosp Med. 2015 Oct 1;
Authors: Sakihama T, Honda H, Saint S, Fowler KE, Kamiya T, Sato Y, Iuchi R, Tokuda Y
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Though hand hygiene is an important method of preventing healthcare-associated infection, we found suboptimal hand hygiene adherence among healthcare workers in 4 diverse Japanese hospitals (adherence rates of 11%-25%).
OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to assess multimodal hand hygiene intervention coupled with a contest to improve hand hygiene adherence.
SETTING: A total of 3 to 4 inpatient wards in 3 Japanese hospitals.
DESIGN: Pre-post intervention study.
INTERVENTION: The intervention was a multimodal hand hygiene intervention recommended by the World Health Organization that was tailored to each facility. The hospital with the highest adherence after the intervention was given $5000 US dollars and a trophy, provided by an American coinvestigator unaffiliated with any of the Japanese hospitals.
MEASUREMENT: We tracked hand hygiene adherence rates before patient contact for each unit and hospital and compared these to pre-intervention adherence rates.
RESULTS: We observed 2982 postintervention provider-patient encounters in 10 units across 3 hospitals. Hand hygiene adherence rates were improved overall after the intervention (18% pre- to 33% postintervention; P < 0.001), but postintervention adherence rates varied considerably: hospital A + 29%, B + 5%, C + 8%. Hospital A won the contest with 40% adherence after the intervention.
CONCLUSIONS: Using a novel contest coupled with a multimodal intervention successfully improved hand hygiene rates among Japanese healthcare workers. Given the overall low rates, however, further improvement is necessary. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2015. © 2015 Society of Hospital Medicine.
PMID: 26427035 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]