“Washed Up and Proud of It”: Hand Hygiene Promotional Campaign

Systematic review of the effectiveness of strategies to encourage patients to remind healthcare professionals about their hand hygiene

“…34 Seven articles examined how HCPs' HH compliance increased, measured by use of HH products (N ¼ 5), 28,68,69,72,75 observations (N ¼ 1) 76 or HCP reports. 80 Three articles reported a significant increase in HCP compliance, 28,68,75 two articles reported an increase but did not state whether it was significant, 69,76 one article reported an increase in one setting (medical intensive care unit) and a decrease in other settings (cardiac surgery intensive care unit and a general medical ward) but these were not significantly different, 72 and one article reported no consistent pattern. 80 …”

“…74 Nine articles measured patient behaviour through self-reports by patients (N ¼ 5), 28,68,74,75,79 HCPs (N ¼ 1) 69 or both (N ¼ 3), 77,78,80 and two articles assessed patient behaviour indirectly as a function of the use of HH products. 72,76 Seven (of the nine) articles did not provide data on baseline participatory levels. 28,68,69,74,75,78 None of the articles were RCTs and only one article had an intervention and control group.…”

“…74 Two articles gave indirect measures of patient involvement based on HCPs' use of HH products. 72,76 Across three (of the six) articles that measured patient behaviour, between 90% and 100% of patients reported asking nurses about their HH during the intervention vs 32e40% asking doctors. 28,68,75 One article revealed that over onethird of HCPs reported being questioned by patients during the intervention.…”

“…79 Eight (of the 11) intervention type 1 articles assessed multicomponent strategies, directed either solely at the patient (N ¼ 4) 28,68,74,75 or at both HCPs and patients (N ¼ 4). 69,72,76,80 Only one article adopted a staged approach to introducing and evaluating each of the different strategies. 74 Due to the study designs of the hypothetical strategy articles (N ¼ 12) 34,46,47,60,62,64e67,81e83 and the intervention type 2 articles (N ¼ 5), 61,63,70,71,73 they were only able to provide data on patients' intentions to ask HCPs about their HH (not their behaviour).…”

Patient Empowerment and Multimodal Hand Hygiene Promotion: A Win-Win Strategy

“…Petersen and colleagues 29 developed a promotional campaign that included educational brochures for patients on hand hygiene, as well as the distribution of alcoholbased handrub. Although patients were encouraged to speak up about hand hygiene, they reported an overall increase of only 10% in HCW compliance, but believed this was attributable to limitations in their observation technique.…”