Author Interviews, Hand Washing, Infections / 09.08.2014
Improving Hand Hygiene Compliance With Red Flashing Lights
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Gianni D'Egidio HBSc, MD, MEng
Academic Division of Internal Medicine
Ottawa Hospital, Canada
Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study?
Dr. D'Egidio: Baseline hand hygiene compliance at our main entrance in our study was 12.4%. We believe one of the main reasons for such an appalling low compliance was that individuals were distracted. Visitors entering are often preoccupied with acquiring information to help them navigate a large and confusing environment given the multitude of signs, lights, announcements and other people. Also, the majority of individuals entering have objects occupying their hands; keys, hand-held devices, coffee mugs, and during cold weather, gloves. All this together contributes to poor compliance at our front entrance.
We hypothesized that a conspicuous flashing red light at 3 Hz (3 flashed per second) attached to alcohol hand dispensers located at our front entrance would attract an individual’s attention and hopefully increase compliance. We measured hand hygiene compliance for 1-week periods from 07:30-08:30 before and after the implementation of our flashing lights. We found that compliance increased by more than double to 25.3% (p<0.0001).
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