What is it about?
Five publicly funded hospitals, in Western Switzerland, joined a collaborative to improve Hand Hygiene compliance. Overall compliance improved from 61.9% to 88.3% (significant) and was sustained at 88.9% after 12 months. Sustained improvement happened for all professional categories (physicians, nursing staff, physiotherapists and X-ray technicians and for all hospitals.
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Why is it important?
Hand Hygiene compliance is often low in hospitals. The last national campaign, in Switzerland, was carried out in 2005-2006 and showed 54% compliance at Baseline. Demonstration of sustained improvement is scarce, in the literature. This study shows that the collaborative implementation of the Word Health Organization's multimodal strategy for Hand Hygiene can lead to sustained improvement.
Perspectives
More generally, impacting clinical results through quality improvement projects at a system-wide level is difficult. Sustaining the improvement is even more difficult. This paper is part of a wider effort to find ways to improve clinical outcome and sustain the gains for patients.
Anthony Staines
University of Lyon, Lyon, France
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Hand Hygiene Improvement and Sustainability: Assessing a Breakthrough Collaborative in Western Switzerland, Infection Control, September 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/ice.2017.180.
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