Visual triggers increase hand hygiene compliance

Researchers at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit found that using images of bacterial growth motivates employees to comply with hand hygiene guidelines up to 46 percent more, reports Nursing Times.

Inspired by research from the U.K. that used emotional motivators in Indian villages to promote hand hygiene behavior, a U.S. research team developed a book of images containing bacterial cultures of differing types and levels of contamination and then tested the images on hospital units that had low hand hygiene compliance rates.

A two-month study of four hospital units samped employees' hands for bacteria 10 times and then showed them pictures of cultures similar to the contamination on their hands. Through the showing of bacterial images, compliance increased between 11 percent and 46 percent.

“Hospital staff wanted to wash their hands after looking at the book and picturing similar contamination on their own skin,” said Ashley Gregory, an infection prevention specialist who co-led the project. “Using this example, other institutions may be able to change behavior and improve their hand hygiene compliance rates by influencing staff to connect the images of microbial contamination with non-adherence to hand hygiene guidelines, these images put a face to the continuous hand hygiene education that health care workers get. They stick in your mind. They gross you out.”

As well as raising hand hygiene compliance, the study also encouraged workers to clean their office spaces.

“Hand hygiene is one of the most important ways to prevent the spread of infection, and yet it can be one of the most difficult benchmarks to improve,” said the association’s president, Susan Dolan, a nurse and hospital epidemiologist at the Children’s Hospital Colorado.

“The visual nature of this approach proved successful for the team at Henry Ford Health System, and it may offer an effective strategy for other healthcare facilities that are looking for ways to change behavior and improve hand hygiene compliance,” she said.