The second day of the conference brought the full scale professional program, presentations in 5 parallel sessions. There were a couple focusing on hand hygiene, with some interesting results. Excerpts: Scheithauer et al. found “No association between hand hygiene and workload”. The hand hygiene events = (HHS)/ patient-day (PD) were associated with the staff time and the nursing effort indicating a constant compliance regardless the workload. This hypothesis was confirmed by the lack of a positive association between the C-value and the HHE/PD. Thus compliance seemed not to be affected by workload at the hematology ward enrolled in this investigation.
It has been shown again that the “Routine use of clinical gloves increase the risk of HAI transmission”. Glove use in acute clinical settings is associated with a significant risk of cross contamination and needs to be more explicitly integrated into hand hygiene policy. An understanding of drivers of glove use behavior is required to design interventions to reduce their misuse and overuse.
Also, Cusini et al. showed that “wearing gloves leads to the negligence of hand hygiene before aseptic procedures”. Eliminating mandatory glove use in contact with isolated patients increased hand hygiene compliance, particularly before invasive procedures and before patient contacts. Glove use may cause healthcare workers to bypass hand hygiene. The potential impact on the risk of MDR organism transmission should be determined next.
We also want to congratulate to the “European Hand Hygiene Excellence Award” winner’s: St. Constantin Hospital (RO) and Mater Private (IE).