Many recent studies have revealed that hospital staff, particularly doctors, do not wash their hands before touching a patient. In Montréal, the MUMC (McGill University Medical Center) unveiled a study last January 2009 revealing the fact that 75% of doctors and 50% of nurses do not sanitize their hands at all before taking care of a patient. They are no worse than most of their colleagues elsewhere since most studies show that compliance with hand-washing directives averages less than 50%.
Even though the efficiency of hand washing does not need to be proven – it helps reduce HAI (hospital acquired infections) by at least 50%- the practice is still met with resistance by hospital staff.
We should also keep in mind the fact that reducing HAI allows for better security and less suffering for patients, and a significant reduction of hospital costs. Hospital staff often works in difficult conditions, where rapidity and stress do not favour a change in their working habits.
However, technology offers different solutions to incite hospital staff to adopt good hand hygiene practice.
- One of them is a Bioluminescence detector which reveals if hands were properly sanitized.
- Another new device, called HyGreen, also detects if hands were sanitized and, even better, will remind staff to do so. Furthermore, this machine will record staff behaviour into a database, giving clinical supervisors the information they need to intervene directly with staff members who are not complying with the hand-hygiene directives.
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