BackgroundIn India,due to manpower constraints, patients’ family members are often actively involved in healthcare activities of their near and dear ones. They have significant contact with the patient at all the 5 moments for hand hygiene (HH) as listed by WHO. At our tertiary care hospital in north India, we have been monitoring HH compliance (HHC) for nearly a decade. In this study, we analyzed the impact of decade long awareness campaigns to improve HH compliance in our patients’ attendants.MethodsTrained infection control nurses directly observed the compliance to hand hygiene at each of the five moments for patients’ attendants over different areas of the hospital over a period of 5 years (January 2014–December 2018). Compliance was calculated as percentage of events over total opportunities and compared.Results7290 opportunities were observed with an overall compliance of 46.3%. The overall HHC in patient attendants has increased from 35.5% in 2014 to 48.2% in 2018 (P < 0.0001). Compliance at WHO moment 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 was 51.2%, 47.8%, 67.8%, 48.9% and 24.4% respectively. Among family members, mothers of newborn babies had a much higher HHC (77%) than others (44.7%) (P < 0.0001). Also, the compliance was higher in medical vs. surgical wards and pediatric wards vs. adult wards (P < 0.0001 in both).ConclusionThis is the first study about family members’ HHC in a hospital setting in a low and middle-income country. Once trained, family members exhibit fairly good hand hygiene compliance while involved in healthcare activities of their patients. Mothers of newborn babies exhibit exemplary hand hygiene compliance while caring for their babies in our hospital. It is worthwhile empowering and educating patient attendants about the importance and process of hand hygiene as it is likely to result in immense benefit for patients.
Disclosures
All authors: No reported disclosures.
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