Bare-below-the-elbow based hand hygiene intervention to improve compliance among allied healthcare professionals and students

Abstract

Introduction: Nosocomial infections are known to cause poor clinical outcomes. Hand hygiene is recognised as an effective tool in controlling infections. However, poor hand hygiene practice is evident worldwide. Thus, this work aimed to determine the effect of hand hygiene intervention on bare-below-the-elbow, before and after the use of mobile communication devices among allied healthcare professionals and students.

Methods: Data was collected in four stages; stage-I was to verify the existence of protocols for hand hygiene. Stage-II was a pre-intervention blind-field observation to determine the compliance rate. Stage-III involved the administration of interventions and stage-IV was based on post-intervention observation to determine the effect of the intervention. The intervention was delivered using scientific literature on hand hygiene and supplemented with a manual demonstration of the same by an infection control nurse. The obtained data was analysed by Kendall rank coefficient test.

Results: The compliance rate was found to be 22.0% and 53.0% in the pre- and post-intervention stage respectively, indicating significant improvement in the hand hygiene practices.

Discussion: This study advocates active participation of the infection control team and suggests the need of periodic interventions on appropriate hand hygiene, particularly to internship students to sustain the hand hygiene practices and control the spread of nosocomial pathogens.