A Ticket To Ride: A Colloborative Approach To Infection Control Initiatives For a Hospital Relocation

Abstract

Issue: In Canada more than 8,000 patients die from health care associated infections a year. Hands of health care workers are the most common mode of transmission. The number one way to prevent infection is to perform hand hygiene by using alcohol based hand rub or soap and water. In 2009/2010 our hospital hand hygiene rates were at an overall rate of 42% compliance. In 2010/ 2011, hand hygiene was picked as a quality indicator with a goal to increase our rate to 80% compliance. Project: Our aim was to increase compliance rates but also implement a sustainable hand hygiene program. In planning our initiatives we spoke with other hospitals with successful hand hygiene programs prior to developing our plan. Results: Successful hand hygiene programs encourage involvement and ownership from frontline staff. Unit auditors or Germinators' were implemented. Staffs from inpatient units were trained to observe and collect hand hygiene data. Binders were created and left on each unit with reference material and this was a place that Germinators' could drop off completed observation sheets for IPAC to pick up. During IPAC week a matching game was put together where staff had tomatch a various leaders of our hospital with their hand hygiene message. Our goal was to engage staff and show that that hand hygiene impacts all departments. In addition, using case studies that had actual outcomes of morbidity andmortality helped staff to understand that infections do kill and that infections can be prevented by hand hygiene. On Global Hand Hygiene day we offered staff a chance to win 6 hours of free house cleaning if they allowed IPAC to observe them for a fewminutes and provide on the spot feedback. This was well received by staff, creating an environment where feedback was acceptable. New pamphlets were implemented encouraging patients to ask if their health care worker had performed hand hygiene. Finally, our program tried to use positive deviance principals. During audits, we highlighted staff that were caught with excellent practice and were given a coffee/ muffin voucher. In addition, IPAC recognized one staff member per quarter as an IPAC star. An article was written for the hospital newsletter recognizing their contributions to positive outcomes for our program. Lesson Learned: Our rates have shown that staff involvement and ownership of hand hygiene rates does in fact impact practice. Although our work is not done and hand hygiene is a continuous battle, through our various initiatives, by being visibly present, using positive reinforcement and education we were able to see an increase in our hand hygiene compliance, from 42% to 75%.