Investigators at an acute care hospital and a community care hospital in Singapore saw good results when entire hospital wards were held accountable for hand hygiene, according to an article on the Infection Control Today website.
The investigators explored how to best address the “campaign fatigue” that hampers many hand-hygiene initiatives.
In the study, hand-hygiene audits were performed by staff trained using the World Health Organization audit tools including ‘Secret Shoppers’ (who were administrative staff not known to ward staff) in addition to those done by infection control liaison nurses and infection control nurses.
The acute care hospital saw hand-hygiene rates rise from 65 percent to 78 percent. The community care hospital saw an increase of 64 percent to 75 percent.