Compliance with hand hygiene among healthcare workers Not Applicable
Conditions
Interventions
In both the intervention and control HCFs, simple hand washing facilities (HWF) (tapped plastic jerricans with a stand and basin) will be provided (where needed) in delivery rooms, post-natal wards, a
when to do hand hygiene
how to do hand hygiene and how to protect others. However, the messages will also have educational jokes and response prompts where HCWs with the highest number of responses will win hand hygiene supp
Sponsors
National Academy of Sciences
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Inclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria: 1. Full-time staff in the selected healthcare facility. This will be based on appointment letters wherever possible 2. Worked in the selected healthcare facility for at least 6 months prior to the study
Exclusion criteria
Exclusion criteria: 1. All healthcare workers in maternal and children’s wards of selected healthcare, who will be on leave at the time of the baseline 2. All healthcare workers in maternal and children’s wards of selected healthcare, who will be so sick at the time of the baseline
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| 1. Proportion of used Hand hygiene (HH) opportunities (number of times HH is observed to be done at critical times out of the total number of observed HH opportunities. Hand hygiene observations will be conducted during the baseline, midline and end-line surveys. The hand hygiene observations will be done in the mornings (8 am – 12 pm) and evenings (4 pm – 8 pm) since these are considered to be peak treatment hours (Fries, Segre et al. 2012). Within the targeted time, 15 hand hygiene opportunities will be observed for each of the selected HCWs (corresponding to 3 patients each with 5 hand hygiene opportunities), and the used and missed opportunities will be recorded. Observations will be conducted by experienced researchers (HCWs or environmental health officers) who will observe from the least obtrusive point within a radius of 10 meters of the patient wards. | — |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| 1. E. coli levels in hand rinsates from HCWs that indicate recent fecal contamination and HH failure collected immediately after the hand hygiene observations during baseline and end-line. The samples (hand rinsates) will be collected by a team of trained environmental health officers. During sampling of hand rinsates, HCWs will put their hands, one at a time in Whirl-Pak bags containing distilled water. The HCWs will wash their hands by rubbing the inner hands for about 2 minutes and the enumerator massaging their hands from outside the whirl pak bag to remove any potential pathogens. Aseptic techniques will be used to collect duplicate samples from each of the study participants (HCWs) during baseline, midline and end-line. The samples will be stored in sterile plastic bottles and transported on ice to the laboratory for further analysis within 4 hours. Hand rinsates will be diluted using the ratios of 1:1, 1:10 and 1:100. The membrane filtration method (with Chromocult agar) will be used to concentrate samples, and incubation will be done at 37°C for 24 hours. Colonies of E.coli will be identified by their dark blue to violet colour, and they will be counted and recorded per 100ml of sample. | — |
Countries
Uganda
Outcome results
None listed