IMPROVING HAND HYGIENE IN THE CLINICAL SETTING A BEST PRACTICE APPROACH

The purpose of this paper is to use evidence based recommendations to develop a best practice protocol in an effort to improve hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers (HCWs) in the clinical setting. Infections that are acquired while receiving healthcare are the most common adverse healthcare related event, with 1.7 million people affected yearly in the United States. Hand hygiene is believed to be the most effective preventative measure against healthcare acquired infections, yet adherence rates among HCWs are estimated to be well below 50%. A literature review was conducted to examine which interventions have been evaluated and indicated the greatest association with improvement in hand hygiene compliance rates. The proposed best-practice protocol is based on these evidence-based interventions and includes suggestions from implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. It is believed that the implementation of this protocol will increase hand hygiene compliance rates and subsequently reduce healthcare associated infections