Few, if any, need convincing that hand hygiene is an effective risk reduction strategy for infection prevention. The gold standard for hand hygiene remains trained observers, however, this is time consuming,costly, laborious and likely subject to bias. Measuring the amount of sanitizer consumed is a surrogate and less accurate measure of capturing hand hygiene in a healthcare setting.
I was encouraged to read that electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems (utilizing wireless systems to monitor room entry and exit of healthcare workers and their use of hand hygiene product dispensers) can provide individual and unit-based data on compliance hand hygiene.These systems are varied and include badges (tags) that can provide healthcare workers with real-time reminders to clean their hands upon entering and exiting patient rooms. We studied one such product. Hand hygiene, in our experience, skyrocketed with electronic surveillance.
Other studies suggest that electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems are associated with increased hand hygiene compliance.
Of course, these systems are expensive, however, if we are serious about infection prevention and patient safety, then they are worth it.
