UK Campaign Confronts Poor Hand Hygiene

David Holyoake, PhD, MSc, a senior lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton in the United Kingdom, reports in Nursing Times on how a group of nursing students identified that a new system of "supporting, shaming and blaming" would encourage healthcare professionals to wash their hands.

Holyoake explains that during a workshop designed to improve healthcare processes, the students changed their thinking from perceiving handwashing as merely an act of hygiene, to seeing it as a social behavior that is part of a larger organizational system.

Holyoake says that during an experiment, the nursing students challenged traditional health promotion messages -- traditionally focusing on how the individual can make a difference and explored how healthcare institutions unintentionally allow cross-contamination and infections to persist. He says that a series of compelling posters were created from the experiment and that individuals began to rethink their approaches to hand hygiene.

To read more from Nursing Times, CLICK HERE.

Reference: Holyoake D (2010) Rethinking traditional handwashing learning. Nursing Times. 106:35, early online publication Sept. 4, 2010.