Major articleThe short-term and long-term effectiveness of a multidisciplinary hand hygiene improvement program
Section snippets
Study design
To improve HH knowledge and HH compliance among nurses and physicians, we performed an observational pilot study in the Department of Internal Medicine of a 953-bed university hospital in The Netherlands. Our study consisted of 4 study phases (Table 1), including the performance of a multifaceted HH improvement program (phase II). HH knowledge tests and HH compliance tests were performed at baseline (phase I), poststrategy (phase III), and follow-up (phase IV). In view of the observational and
Hand hygiene knowledge
At baseline, as well as poststrategy and follow-up, 68 HH knowledge questionnaires were distributed. Forty-four participants (65%) returned the questionnaire at baseline, 41 (60%) at poststrategy, and 39 (57%) at follow-up (Table 3). Compared with baseline, there was a significant improvement in the overall mean HH knowledge score at poststrategy (from 7.4 to 8.4) and follow-up (from 7.4 to 8.3). Overall, the questionnaire score was significantly better in nurses than in staff physicians (0.5
Discussion
Our study showed that overall as well as in the subgroups of nurses and physicians, a considerable increase in the HH knowledge (about 1 point increase at poststrategy and at follow-up) and in HH compliance (about 50% increase at poststrategy and at follow-up) was achieved.
In line with Naikoba and Hayward’s conclusion,8 we developed a multifaceted strategy. It is impossible to conclude which components were—to what degree—responsible for our achieved improvement. However, there was only a
Acknowledgment
The research team thanks the nurses and physicians of the Department of Internal Medicine for completing and returning the questionnaires and for giving us the opportunity to carry out the observations and, in particular, Dr C. Delsing (MD), M. Heijnen (PA), and the students from the faculty of health and social studies for the performance of the observations.
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Conflicts of interest: None to report.