Can educational speech intervention improve visitors' hand hygiene compliance?

• Published in: The Journal of hospital infection 2020-04, Vol.104 (4), p.414-418
• Main Authors: El Marjiya Villarreal, S., Khan, S., Oduwole, M., Sutanto, E., Vleck, K., Katz, M., Greenough, W.B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic Medical Centers; Baltimore; Cross Infection - prevention & control; Educational speech; Guideline Adherence - statistics & numerical data; Hand hygiene; Hand Hygiene - methods; Hand Hygiene - statistics & numerical data; Health Education - methods; Hospital visitor; Hospitals; Humans; Speech; Surveys and Questionnaires; Visitors to Patients - statistics & numerical data
• ISSN: 0195-6701; 1532-2939
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhin.2019.12.002

Hand hygiene, a simple and low-cost measure, remains the leading intervention for reducing the burden related to healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). While many interventions have been tested to improve staff hand hygiene compliance, hospital visitors continue to have low compliance rates, which increases the risk of HAIs and resistant organisms' transmission into hospitals and out to the community. To assess the effectiveness of educational speech intervention (ESI) for increasing hand hygiene compliance rate among hospital visitors. This interventional study was conducted from March to June 2019 in an inpatient unit of a large academic hospital. Visitor hand hygiene compliance was observed before and after implementation of ESI. The purpose of providing ESI to the visitors in the intervention phase was to remind them about the importance of hand hygiene and the proper method for cleaning hands. Post-intervention data were collected using the survey questionnaires. Unpaired t-test compared the hand hygiene compliance rate before and after the intervention. Baseline hand hygiene compliance rate was 9.73% while hand hygiene compliance rate post-intervention increased to 87.06% (P