Quality
Hand Hygiene Compliance Shows Continuous Improvement
Nurses at the University of Chicago Medical Center have long been committed to hand hygiene, recognizing the power of proper hygiene in preventing patient complications. And in 2008, the Joint Commission also designated hand hygiene compliance as a National Patient Safety Goal.
While increasing hand hygiene compliance has been a multi-year initiative at the Medical Center, significant improvements were gained in fiscal year 2010. Continuous improvement in complying with standards for hand hygiene both upon entering and leaving patients' rooms was achieved in each quarter.
Identifying and implementing activities that remind staff of the importance of hand hygiene and encourage them to perform hand hygiene when opportunities arose was a top priority among quality resource nurses and direct care nurses who worked with Infection Control on the program.
Some of the activities included:
- Adding flags to Purell® dispensers to identify when dispensers needed to be refilled.
- One-on-one and small group education about hand hygiene and infection control issues.
- Developing a script quality resource nurses (QRNs) could use to discuss the hand hygiene initiative on their units.
- Regular hand hygiene observation by QRNs and unit leadership.
- Distributing a crossword puzzle with clues and answers related to hand hygiene throughout the inpatient units.
- Holding a Purell® Pal design contest in which participants decorated functioning Purell bottles as people.
LaTonya Macklin, RN, BSN, OCN, staff nurse on 6 NW (Hem/Onc) and co-chair of the Quality Resource Nurse program, was involved in the planning and implementation of the hand hygiene initiatives.
"I feel very satisfied that as an organization, people are more aware of the importance of hand hygiene in decreasing infections," Macklin said. "Raising awareness among our staff was more successful because our initiatives made the consequences clear."
