What’s New in the Patient Safety World
August 2016
Hand Hygiene: Who’s Watching? Does it Matter?
Two recent studies suggest that hand hygiene compliance rates are overestimated when healthcare workers know they are being observed. The first, a California medical center study presented at the 43rd Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), found a difference of more than 30 percent in hand hygiene compliance depending on whether or not they recognized the auditors (APIC 2016a). The Hawthorne effect, very loosely applied to imply that behavior changes when subjects know they are being observed (our apologies to purists who will state that is not the actual phenomenon observed at Western Electric), appears to result in an overestimate of compliance with hand hygiene.
The second study, done in Canada, also showed a disparity between healthcare worker compliance with hand hygiene observed covertly compared to reporting by staff observers (Kovacs-Litman 2016). Moreover, there may be a disparity in the phenomenon between physicians and nurses. Canadian researchers trained students to covertly observe hand hygiene compliance and compared their assessments with the formal compliance assessments done by hospital staff. The covert observers noted hand hygiene compliance to be 50% compared to 83.7% reported by the hospital staff. For physicians compliance reported by hospital auditors and covert observers, respectively, was 73.2% vs 54.2%, whereas for nurses compliance reported by hospital auditors and covert observers, respectively, was 85.8% vs 45.1%.
Importantly, as we’ve often pointed out, the behavior of the head of the team significantly influences the behavior of all the others. The researchers noted that physician trainees had much better hand hygiene compliance when their attendings cleaned their hands than when they did not (79.5% vs. 18.9%).
Meanwhile, many hospitals have begun to use electronic monitoring of hand hygiene compliance even though this technology has not yet been shown to substantially reduce hospital infections. But a new study (Kelly 2016), analyzing data from 23 inpatient units over a 33-month period found a significant correlation between unit-specific improvements in electronic monitoring compliance and reductions in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection rates.
Another study presented at the recent APIC Annual Conference found that showing hospital staff enlarged images of bacterial cultures similar to those they might have on their hands increased compliance with hand hygiene by 11-46% (APIC 2016b).
Of course, the attending physician serving as a role model for hand hygiene and the use of visual imagery to promote hand hygiene are forms of “nudges” (see our July 7, 2009 Patient Safety Tip of the Week “Nudge: Small Changes, Big Impacts”). In our April 2016 What's New in the Patient Safety World column “Nudge: An Example for Hand Hygiene” we cited an article that showed location of hand sanitizers significantly influenced their use by visitors (Hobbs 2016). The key finding was that when the hand sanitizers were placed in the middle of the lobby (with limited landmarks or barriers) visitors were 5.28 times more likely to use them.
So how about
locating hand sanitizers right on healthcare workers? Researchers at Darthmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and UMass Memorial Medical
Center did just that (Koff
2016). They randomly assigned operating room environments to usual
intraoperative hand hygiene or to a personalized, body-worn hand hygiene
system. They found an 8-fold increase in anesthesia and circulating nurse
provider hand decontamination events above that of conventional wall-mounted
devices. However, use of the hand hygiene system was not associated with a
reduction in healthcare-associated infections.
Improving hand hygiene compliance rates remains a frustratingly difficult endeavor in most healthcare facilities. But we can all learn from successes elsewhere. Every little bit helps.
Some of our other columns on handwashing and hand hygiene:
January 5, 2010 “How’s Your Hand Hygiene?”
December 28, 2010 “HAI’s: Looking In All The Wrong Places”
May 24, 2011 “Hand Hygiene Resources”
October 2011 “Another Unintended Consequence of Hand Hygiene Device?”
March 2012 “Smile…You’re on Candid Camera”
August 2012 “Anesthesiology and Surgical Infections”
October 2013 “HAI’s: Costs, WHO Hand Hygiene, etc.”
November 18, 2014 “Handwashing
Fades at End of Shift, ?Smartwatch to the Rescue”
January 20, 2015 “He
Didn’t Wash His Hands After What!”
September 2015 “APIC’s
New Guide to Hand Hygiene Programs”
November 2015 “Hand
Hygiene: Paradoxical Solution?”
April 2016 “Nudge:
An Example for Hand Hygiene”
References:
APIC (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology). The Hawthorne Effect hinders accurate hand hygiene observation, study says. APIC News Release 2016; June 10, 2016
http://www.apic.org/For-Media/News-Releases/Article?id=d3702eac-c445-4641-9139-7d5545752905
Kovacs-Litman A, Wong K, Shojania KG, et al. Do physicians clean their hands? Insights from a covert observational study. J Hosp Med 2016; Early View 5 July 2016
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jhm.2632/abstract
APIC (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology). Seeing is believing: Visual triggers increase hand hygiene compliance. APIC News Release 2016; June 9, 2016
http://www.apic.org/For-Media/News-Releases/Article?id=cfd082bd-7164-4f7c-ada7-6a6572885015
Hobbs MA, Robinson S, Neyens DM, Steed C. Visitor characteristics and alcohol-based hand sanitizer dispenser locations at the hospital entrance: Effect on visitor use rates.
Am J Infection Contol 2016; 44(3): 258-262
http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553%2815%2901158-X/abstract
Koff MD, Brown JR, Marshall EJ, et
al. Frequency of Hand Decontamination of Intraoperative Providers and Reduction
of Postoperative Healthcare-Associated Infections: A Randomized Clinical Trial
of a Novel Hand Hygiene System. Infect
Control Hosp Epidemiol
2016; 1-8 Published onlne June 7, 2016
Kelly JW, Blackhurst D, McAtee W, Steed C. Electronic hand hygiene monitoring as a tool for reducing health care–associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection. Am J Infect Control 2016; Published online: June 23, 2016
http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(16)30340-6/pdf
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