Hand Hygiene

There is “universal recognition” that hand hygiene practices reduce the spread of HAIs, notes nursing researcher Elizabeth McInnes, yet “healthcare workers’ compliance with best practice has been sub-optimal. Senior hospital managers have responsibilities for implementing pa-tient safety initiatives and are therefore ideally placed to provide suggestions for improving strategies to increase hand hygiene compliance.”

Remote video auditing (RVA) with feedback is a promising new technology shown to dramatically improve compliance among healthcare workers (HCWs). Emerging research suggests that the proven efficacy of these systems is associated with the real-time performance evaluation and reminders they provide to HCW, which encourages staff to improve or modify aspects of their behavior.

If having limited resources at your healthcare institution is forcing you to choose one key infection control-related intervention -- either hand hygiene or environmental hygiene -- to get the most return on investment, what would you select? Researchers have developed a model that can help infection preventionists, healthcare epidemiologists and administrators determine which strategies have a better pay-off from a patient safety perspective and can help guide resource-allocation decisions.

One of the most talked-about issues at last year's IDWeek conference was patient bathing with chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG). The topic was included in a session called "Thorny Issues in Infection Prevention" in which panelists described practical solutions to real-world problems in infection prevention, compared the strengths and weaknesses of the solutions discussed, and debated strategies to assist in the implementation of the solutions presented. Moderated by Charles Huskins, MD, MSc, FIDSA, FSHEA, FPIDS, of Mayo Clinic and Thomas Talbot, MD, MPH, of Vanderbilt University, the panel included Loreen Herwaldt, MD, FIDSA, FSHEA; Susan Ray, MD, FIDSA; Stephen Parodi, MD, FIDSA; Edward Septimus, MD, FIDSA, FSHEA; and Danielle Zerr, MD, MPH, FPIDS. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics are well known - 1 in every 20 hospital patients acquires an infection while receiving medical care in hospitals. The CDC’s most recent estimates blame these healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) for nearly 100,000 deaths annually.