Increased hand hygiene knowledge reduces infection risk
Two studies among healthcare workers and schoolchildren find
Increased knowledge of hand hygiene positively correlates with a decreased risk of transmitting infection among healthcare workers and schoolchildren, according to two studies published in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC).
In the first study, 71 nurses, as well as those involved in infection prevention and hospital environmental services managers, took part in a national survey to gauge hand hygiene knowledge and beliefs.
The healthcare workers assessed 16 real-life simulations designed to test their perceived risk of infection, based on their level of hygiene knowledge as well as their internal health locus of control, which is a measurement of how much influence they perceive themselves to have over controlling the spread of infection.
The study, conducted by Anne McLaughlin, assistant professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, found that across all knowledge and health locus of control levels, healthcare workers perceived surfaces as safer to touch than patient skin, in spite of research that has proved that touching one contaminated surface (known as a fomite) can spread bacteria to the next seven surfaces touched.
“Despite the dangers that fomites present, this knowledge may not be common enough among healthcare workers for them to understand the level of risk when touching surfaces and then touching patients,” the authors said.
The second study looked at hand washing programmes among schoolchildren and found such programmes may help reduce absences from school.
A three-month targeted intervention to reduce student absenteeism through increased hand hygiene was conducted in 2008.
Inge Nandrup-Bus directed the study at two elementary schools in Denmark and compared her results with a similar study she performed in 2007 – the only significant change being that for the second trial, the Intervention School (IS) and the Control School (CS) were reversed.
At the IS, 324 pupils aged 5–14 were given a lesson in hand disinfection theory and practice and directed to disinfect their hands using ethanol gel three times throughout the school day.
Over the three months of the intervention, there was in a 66% drop in pupils with four or more days of absence, and a 20% increase in children with zero absences compared with the 2007 data from the same school.
In the CS, however, which had been the intervention school the prior year in hand washing, no significant changes were noted between 2007 and 2008, which suggests that even with low participation rates (20% in 2007 and 21% in 2008) and the passage of time, merely increasing hand hygiene education can have a long-term, significant impact on the spread of infection.
“Regular training in hand washing and hand disinfection would be a simple, low-cost action with very significant impact on reducing infectious illness absence periods among pupils,” said Nandrup-Bus.
Both studies are published in the American Journal of Infection Control, Volume 39, Issue 6 (August 2011).
