Situation analysis of infection control and hand hygiene resources and processes in Greek hospitals

What is it about?

This national level survey assessed the level of implementation of multimodal infection control strategies in 17 acute-care hospitals in Greece. It provided a systematic situation analysis of hand hygiene resources, structures, practices and promotion. Survey results showed that: • Greek hospitals are, on average, at an intermediate level in hand hygiene practice. • Training, feedback and safety climate for hand hygiene require improvements. • Infection control nurse staffing levels significantly affect implementation progress.

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Why is it important?

This study illustrates the utility of standardized tools provided by the WHO and ECDC in a benchmarking analysis to suggest achievable standards for improvements in infection processes and resources, emphasizing on hand hygiene. Few national or regional studies providing such systematic situation analysis have been performed to date and we compared our findings with two large studies performed in the USA (Allegranzi et al. Am J Infect Control 2014) and in Italy (Bert et al. J Patient Safety 2017). We confirmed that infection control nurse staffing levels significantly affect the progress of implementation of multimodal hand hygiene strategies, in particular to achieve good progress in education-training and for the creation of an institutional safety climate for hand hygiene.