An observational study of hand hygiene adherence following the introduction of an education intervention.

Hand hygiene adherence needs to be increased and sustained in order to prevent and reduce healthcare associated infections. We implemented an educational intervention and observed the adherence of healthcare workers, patients and visitors over 24 hour periods at four observation points. For healthcare workers a total of 2,294 opportunities were observed and for patients and visitors, a total of 597 opportunities were observed. Healthcare worker adherence increased following the introduction of the educational intervention, with 53.0% (282/532) adherence at baseline (observation point 1), and was sustained varying between 67.7% and 70.8% in the post-intervention points (=0.0007). The greatest increase in adherence was observed between baseline and the observation point 2. Adherence varied according to type of opportunity (<0.0001) with the lowest level of adherence observed after contact with patient surroundings, however there was no obvious trend across the observation points. There was an interaction between point of study and ward (=0.0001). For patients and visitors, adherence did differ according to the point of study (=0.0074) with adherence prior to the intervention being 49.1% and then ranging from 43.5-61.8%. We suggest that future educational interventions should be implemented as this study implies that there is potential for increased and sustained adherence to hand hygiene protocols.