Improving Hand Hygiene in a Rural Critical Access Hospital

Hand hygiene adherence is the single most important infection control practice among healthcare workers in United States hospitals. Hand hygiene is cost effective and adherence to protocols can reduce hospital acquired infections and employee illness. While hand hygiene adherence has been shown through research to improve patient safety and reduce hospital acquired infections, adherence to hand hygiene protocols among healthcare workers is poor and improvement efforts lack sustainability. A potential barrier to performing hand hygiene includes failure of healthcare workers to realize they are carrying microbes on their hands and what proper hand hygiene is, whether using soap and water hand hygiene or an alcohol based hand sanitizer. Healthcare workers may have low adherence because hand hygiene stations are not available, they believe they do not have time, or they have a lack of concern due to insufficient knowledge. Greater awareness and knowledge are needed across the United States. The quality improvement (QI) project implemented multiple methods to increase hand hygiene adherence at a rural critical access hospital over a period of three months and monitored post implementation to evaluate sustainability