Hand washing amongst doctors remains poor according to results of an Australian study. This is despite both local and national education to promote the benefits of having clean hands when seeing patients. Doctors have come out worse than other healthcare professionals in their adherence to keeping their extremities free of germs.
Whether it is knowledge, attitudes, beliefs or personality traits that influence compliance remains unknown, say the team from Flinders University School of Medicine in Adelaide and colleagues in their study in the American Journal of Infection Control.
This was an observational study of hand hygiene practices of 32 doctors in 2 teaching hospitals in South Australia. Compliance rates were correlated with self-reported thinking styles. The doctors were observed by a trained observer during a ward round or outpatient clinic and were unaware that hand hygiene was under observation.
Mean compliance was poor – at 7.6%, with each doctor performing between 0 and 12 hand hygiene acts whilst being observed. Interestingly of the 32 doctors, eight were observed never to have cleaned their hands.
They have concluded that hand hygiene is more experiential than rational. Findings suggest that certain promotional strategies appealing to the experiential thinking mode may improve compliance, and that traditional approaches based on logic and reasoning alone probably will not work. They suggest that hospitals may plate individual doctors hands and compare those who regular wash with those who do not in a bid to change behaviour.
Reference: Am J Infect Control. 2008 Aug ;36:399-406.
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