A systematic approach for the location of hand sanitizer dispensers in hospitals

Compliance with hand hygiene practices is directly affected by the accessibility and availability of cleaning agents. Nevertheless, the decision of where to locate these dispensers is often not explicitly or fully addressed in the literature. In this paper, we study the problem of selecting the loca...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health care management science 2014-09, Vol.17 (3), p.245-258
Main Authors: Cure, Laila, Van Enk, Richard, Tiong, Ewing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol
Alcohols
Business and Management
Cleaning compounds
Compliance
Computer Simulation
Cost control
Data collection
Econometrics
Ergonomics
Guideline Adherence
Hand Disinfection - instrumentation
Hand Sanitizers
Hands
Health Administration
Health Informatics
Hospitals
Humans
Hygiene
Intervention
Management
Nosocomial infections
Operations Research/Decision Theory
Optimization
Patient safety
Practice Guidelines as Topic
Sanitizers
Statistical analysis
Systems Analysis
Usability
Workflow
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Compliance with hand hygiene practices is directly affected by the accessibility and availability of cleaning agents. Nevertheless, the decision of where to locate these dispensers is often not explicitly or fully addressed in the literature. In this paper, we study the problem of selecting the locations to install alcohol-based hand sanitizer dispensers throughout a hospital unit as an indirect approach to maximize compliance with hand hygiene practices. We investigate the relevant criteria in selecting dispenser locations that promote hand hygiene compliance, propose metrics for the evaluation of various location configurations, and formulate a dispenser location optimization model that systematically incorporates such criteria. A complete methodology to collect data and obtain the model parameters is described. We illustrate the proposed approach using data from a general care unit at a collaborating hospital. A cost analysis was performed to study the trade-offs between usability and cost. The proposed methodology can help in evaluating the current location configuration, determining the need for change, and establishing the best possible configuration. It can be adapted to incorporate alternative metrics, tailored to different institutions and updated as needed with new internal policies or safety regulation.
ISSN:1386-9620
1572-9389
DOI:10.1007/s10729-013-9254-y