Going Touchless is a High-Tech Solution to Hand Hygiene Compliance

While handwashing compliance among healthcare workers (HCWs) and allied staff remains notoriously low in numerous hospitals, perhaps it’s time to realize that their behavior as “civilians” when not on the job may have a lot to do with it. Recent surveys indicate that an alarming number of people don’t wash their hands after using a public restroom. In a recent observational study sponsored by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the Soap and Detergent Association (SDA), 77 percent of men and women washed their hands in public restrooms, a 6 percent decline from a similar study conducted in 2005.¹ Yet, in a separate telephone survey, 92 percent of adults said they wash their hands in public restrooms. Americans’ self-reported hygiene behavior in 2007 remains consistent with what past surveys show; among 1,001 men and women interviewed via telephone in 2007, 92 percent say they always wash their hands after using a public restroom and 86 percent say they do likewise after using the bathroom in the home. In 2005, those figures were 91 percent and 83 percent, respectively.¹

A recent survey conducted as part of ASM’s Clean Hands Campaign revealed that although 95 percent of men and women claim that they wash after using a public toilet, observations made by researchers discovered that only 67 percent actually do.¹ And a survey conducted by Impulse Research Corporation found that 30 percent of Americans use restrooms away from home only when absolutely necessary. The same survey discovered that among people who do use public restrooms, nearly 66 percent use a variety of maneuvers to avoid touching anything, including using their feet to flush toilets, their elbows to open doors, and paper towels to turn off faucets and open handled doors on their way out.

In a healthcare environment, contaminated environmental surfaces are often the vectors for multidrug-resistant organisms — especially those in the washroom. Kelly² observes, “Surfaces such as toilets, sinks, faucets and flushing handles, door handles, stall doors and paper towel dispensers all can pick up bacterium from unwashed hands, passing it along to the next user ... studies have shown that even healthcare workers aren’t always able to wash their hands as often or as effectively as necessary to prevent cross-contamination. In fact, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement has indicated that compliance by healthcare workers with recommended hand-hygiene procedures has remained unacceptable, with compliance rates generally below 50 percent of hand-hygiene opportunities.”