The Impact of Short Term Hand Hygiene Campaign in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Hand washing is the single most effective precaution for prevention of infection transmission between patients and staff. Despite evidence based guidelines for healthcare workers on hand hygiene, compliance is internationally low.

To assess the impact of short term hand hygiene campaign on "Moment One" and "Moment Two" of hand hygiene practice as defined by the WHO and to report comparable results of hand hygiene practice pre and post intervention.

The study was conducted in the following Units of a Tertiary care hospital of Northern India- Coronary Care Unit (CCU), Cardio-thoracic Surgery ICU (CTVS-ICU), Cardiology Wards and Cardio-thoracic Surgical Wards (CTVS-W's). The study was conducted through a three cross evaluation periods to moment one for hand hygiene (before touching a patient) and moment two (after touching the patient); Pre intervention (p1), Post intervention (p2). Pre intervention data was harvested in above units through direct observation. This was followed by the celebration of "Hand hygiene awareness week" (interventional phase) lasting six days of hectic campaign to spread the message of hand hygiene. After awareness week, post intervention data was collected from above units.

The hand hygiene compliance improved from an overall score of 45% (in pre interventional phase) to 88% (in post interventional phase) for "Moment One" and from 68% to 96% for "Moment Two".

Poor compliance with hand hygiene practice can be improved with short term campaigns lasting 4–6 days. These short term campaigns are economical and easy to organize.