Hand Hygiene and Patient Safety- A Novel Psychological Motivator?

Source: WSJ

Here is a recent WSJ Health Blog on hand hygiene. I am not going to bore you with my perspective on how we have increased hand hygiene in my place of employment.I  will, however, pay kudos to a soon to be published study in the journal Psychological Science, cited in the article above. 


The investigators approached the hand hygiene compliance dilemma from a psychological perspective- emphasizing patient health. The study authors describe two experiments that pitted a sign stating that “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases” against one stating that “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.”


Hand hygiene adherence increased significantly (to 89.2% from 80.7%) with the patient-consequences sign but didn’t change significantly with the personal-consequences sign.


Interesting and simple enough in approach. Will the effect last on a long term basis? Will the incremental benefit still hold in the event that HH adherence is already at 90%.


I look forward to reading the fine details of the study once published