MOVING ANNOUNCEMENT
We have moved our hand hygiene blog to another location. Our new site will give the chance to comment our posts and search older posts easier. We hope that these changes will bring us closer.
Evolution of Hand Hygiene Assessment Tools
2017.03.02.
From UV-lamps through black boxes to the Semmelweis Scanner
Why Direct Observation Is Not Often Objective?
2017.02.23.
Our last post addressed the Hawthorne effect, which refers to the tendency of people behaving differently when they know that they are being observed. In IPC, this leads to the overestimation of the hand hygiene compliance values [1]. Unfortunately, the Hawthorne effect is not the only bias, that can modify the results of direct observation of hand hygiene. We describe now a few more. Observer bias is often confused with the Hawthorne effect or observer effect, but it is quite different. While the Hawthorne effect describes the change of the observed person’s behavior, the observer bias is independent from the… Read more
Looking Into the Hawthorne Effect, and Why Is It Important in Infection Control?
2017.02.16.
The Hawthorne effect is a well-described psychological phenomenon, it basically means that people (and even animals) change their behavior if they know that they are being observed by someone. As the direct observation is the gold standard for monitoring hand hygiene compliance, we need to better understand the influence of the Hawthorne effect [1]. The Hawthorne effect was first reported in the 1950s, at Western Electric telephone manufacturing factory at Hawthorne (near Chicago), where they carried out a study about how the modification of environmental factors (lighting, temperature, work hours, etc.) can change productivity [2]. They got a quite surprising… Read more
Microbiological Validation of the Fluorescent Trial
2017.02.09.
In our previous posts, we described what the fluorescent method is, and where should it be applied. But is the fluorescent method validated microbiologically? How can we know that the shining areas are really disinfected? Now, we discuss it. One of the first studies that compared the distribution of the fluorescent dye with microbiological samples was carried out by Widmer and Dangel 2004. They tested hand hygiene technique of trained infection control professionals, hospital epidemiologists and students. They measured highly variable log10 reduction values, from 0 to 3.85. One of the main limitations of their study was that although they… Read more
Where Should the Fluorescence Method Be Applied?
2017.02.02.
In our previous post, we described what the fluorescent method is, and how to apply it to examine hand hygiene technique. Now, we will present some of the good practices, settings, where the fluorescent method should be applied. At the Medical Faculty of the University of Debrecen (Hungary), the fluorescent method was applied to test the effectiveness of surgical hand rub technique. In the 2013/2014 academic year, 285 third-year medical students were involved in a survey; surgical and rubbing technique were investigated twice with the fluorescence method during the semester. The most common insufficiently disinfected areas were thumbs and fingertips…. Read more
Fluorescent Hand Hygiene Control
2017.01.26.
What is the fluorescent trial and how can we apply it? For testing one’s hand hygiene, the two most commonly used methods are the microbiological sampling and the fluorescent dying method. In this post, we discuss the fluorescent method in details. The fluorescent method was developed to assess the hand hygiene technique. Health-care workers should perform handrubbing as they usually do, the only difference is that the handrub contains a fluorescent dye. After the hand hygiene event, hands should be placed under (harmless) UV-A light. Regions of hand surface treated with proper amount of fluorescent handrub glow, where untreated areas… Read more