Monday, November 11, 2013

Hand Hygiene- Revisited

The issue of hand hygiene compliance continues to resurface in our discussions on infection
prevention. Here is an up to date review article on hand hygiene by Dr. John Boyce. 

New electronic methods for monitoring hand hygiene practices are increasingly popular. These interventions are expensive, likely increase compliance with hand hygiene and may be superior to compliance assessments of hand hygiene by direct observation.  As with any method of compliance monitoring, non-punitive feedback to healthcare workers is needed to further encourage improvements in practice.

However, as of today's date, I am unable to find comparative data on the incremental benefit of electronic hand hygiene technologies vs. direct hand hygiene observation with respect to increased hand hygiene compliance and decreased healthcare associated infection rates.

We still have more work to do on the practice of hand hygiene.