The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) and the Premier healthcare alliance today released research showing that a video can be an effective tool for encouraging patients to remind healthcare staff to wash their hands.
The research tested the effectiveness of a CDC video called “Hand Hygiene Saves Lives.” The video encourages patients, family and visitors to play a role in their own care by helping healthcare professionals remember to clean their hands before and after touching patients. After the video was shown to patients in 17 CHP facilities, patients were twice as likely to report reminding nurses to wash their hands, and doctors were twice as likely to report being asked by patients to wash their hands.
“Research has shown that hand hygiene adherence among medical professionals is less than optimal, despite long-standing evidence showing that it helps prevent healthcare-associated infections (HAIs),” said Dr. John Jernigan of the CDC. “This video is a tool hospitals can use to empower patients to participate in their own care and reduce their risk of acquiring an infection by reminding caregivers to perform hand hygiene.”
There are approximately 1.7 million HAIs and nearly 100,000 associated deaths among hospitalized patients each year. In addition, infections cost the healthcare system between $35-45 billion annually.
“Preventing HAIs is a high priority goal at all CHP hospitals, and we believe that patients can partner with us to assure safe and high-quality care,” said Carolyn Wieging RN, BSN, CIC, infection prevention and control manager at St. Rita's Medical Center. “This video encourages that partnership by making it clear that it is perfectly acceptable to ask care givers to wash their hands to reduce their risk of infection.”
“We are pleased to see that the video we developed with the CDC is having such a positive impact on patient empowerment,” said Christine Nutty, RN, MSN, CIC, 2009 president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) which helped to create “Hand Hygiene Saves Lives.” “Hand hygiene is the No. 1 way to prevent the spread of infection, so these are really encouraging results. We hope this leads to increased hand hygiene compliance and improved patient outcomes.”