By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Hand by sochacki.info, via Flickr

The trouble with hands is that they get into everything, and rapidly move between mouths, noses, eyes, and other people’s hands.

So says David Owen in his recent New Yorker article “Hands Across America,” which describes the development of the first gel sanitizer—and of course it’s nothing nurses and other clinicians don’t already know, just as they know that the practice of hand hygiene is crucial to reducing health care–associated infection rates. Yet adherence to hand hygiene guidelines among health care workers remains low. Interventions to improve hand hygiene have been tested in hospitals with demonstrated success, but have seldom been evaluated in other settings. In this month’s CE–Original Research feature, authors Kate Stenske KuKanich and colleagues describe their evaluation of a hand hygiene campaign in an outpatient oncology clinic and an outpatient gastrointestinal (GI) clinic.

The intervention. At each clinic, the researchers observed health care workers for the frequency of hand hygiene (attempts versus opportunities). After compiling baseline data, they initiated an intervention, which consisted of introducing an alcohol-based gel sanitizer and an informational poster to each clinic. (The gel sanitizer was provided as an alternative to foam sanitizer and soap and water.) One week later, interventional data were collected for five nonconsecutive days. Afterwards the posters and gel sanitizers were removed, and one month later, follow-up data were collected. Lastly, three months after follow-up observations ended, workers at […]