Hand Hygiene in the World

Time to time, we survey the international scientific literature to provide you new gems.

Hong Kong Baptist Hospital (HKBH), a private, 850-bed institution has fully embraced the WHO HH guidelines and the additional promotional  tools in its daily routine since 2007. This article claims that during the first year, there has been a significant increase in HH compliance among  the healthcare workers, but it remained unchanged afterwards, despite the  several promotion posters. In 2012, the authors came up with a new way to promote HH: they recruited experienced nurses and trained them to become infection control link nurses (ICLN).

After  several brainstorming session, they implemented their strategy having  ICLNs as leaders. The study reveled that “self-designed reminders could  be more effective than ready-made posters”. An interesting experiment conducted was helping doctors to comply with HH, having ICLNs beside them to squirt on their hands when needed. This way the doctors compliance  with HH increased even more, from 36.9% to 72% hospital wide.

Although  this innovative campaign was conducted by the hospital’s own staff, it  required a lot of extra work from the nurses, but it revels that human  contact is more efficient that hanging posters and having the hand rub beside every room.

If you ave experience with the ICLN method, let us know!

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