Efficacy of Promotion for Hand Hygiene to Decrease Rate of Infection at Private Ward

Abstract

The objectives of this quasi-experimental study were to assess the efficacy of Hand-hygiene campaign measures on health-care workers (HCWs) behavior and decreasing the rate of infection in the Somdejprasangkharaj 17^th  Hospital. The data was collected from one hundred and ten HCWs such as doctors, nurses, nurse aids and workers in private ward. The numbers of handwashings before and after first five patient daytime cares were recorded by single—blind observation before campaign (January 1^st  - 31^st , 2008) and after campaign period (March 1^st – 31^st , 2008). The paired t-test was used to compare the mean differences between numbers of handwashings and proportion test was used to compare the mean differences of the hospital infection rate.

The study showed that the hand—hygiene campaign measures could significantly increase the numbers of handwashings before (1.07 times) and after (0.85 times) patient daytime cares in all groups. The least increase in numbers of handwashings was the nurse group, before (0.48 times) and after (0.51 times) patient daytime cares, because of good hand-hygiene behaviors of nurses before the campaign. The highest increase in numbers of handwashings was the worker group, increased 2.98 times both before and after patient daytime cares, consequence of the campaign process. The outcome of good hand—hygiene behavior could significantly decrease the private ward infection rate from 2.01% in January, 2008 to 1.35% in March, 2008 and then decreased to 0.68% in June, 2008.

In conclusion, hand-hygiene campaign measures had a good efficacy for improving HCWs hand-hygiene and decrease the hospital infection rate. lt should declare these measures to promote positive hand-hygiene behavior with continuous process.