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 But many doctors and nurses don't like the idea of patients telling
them to clean up, the authors say.
“Hand hygiene is regarded as the most effective measure for
preventing the spread of infection in health-care settings,” the
authors write in the American Journal of Infection Control. “It is
of primary importance to build a better understanding and to promote
a facilitating environment for patient participation among patients
and health care workers.”
Healthcare authorities already recommend patient participation to
improve hand hygiene, but the authors said it's unclear whether the
idea is acceptable to either patients or health workers.
Dr. Min-Kyung Kim of the Seoul National University College of
Medicine and colleagues surveyed 334 patients or family members, as
well as 152 doctors and 387 nurses at one hospital in Seoul.
They asked patients and families if they were aware of the
importance of hand washing, if they wanted to or planned on asking
health care workers about hand hygiene and why they wouldn’t want to
ask about it.
The researchers also asked doctors and nurses for their perceptions
of the importance of hand hygiene, how often they washed their hands
and reasons they didn't, and how they felt about patient
participation.
Seventy-five percent of patients and 84 percent of their families
wished to ask health care workers to wash their hands if they had
not already washed them.
But only 26 percent of doctors and 31 percent of nurses supported
the idea that patients should ask them to wash their hands. The most
common reason they disagreed with patient participation was concern
about negative effects on relationships with patients.
Other reasons included an increase in workload, patients’ lack of
knowledge, concerns about legal problems and concern that their
authority would be undermined.
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If patients were going to participate, then doctors and nurses would
prefer to be asked directly to wash their hands. But patients and
their families preferred to assess healthcare workers’ hand washing
when they were discharged or periodically during their hospital
stay, rather than asking health workers directly.
Dr. Nasia Safdar, who was not involved in the study, said that
patients and providers agree hand hygiene is important, but they
disagree on the best way to promote it.
“Patient involvement and perceptions, as well as those of providers,
are very culturally specific, so findings in one setting are not
necessarily generalizable,” Safdar told Reuters Health in an email.
Safdar, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin Department of
Medicine, said she believes both doctors and patients would feel
comfortable if the patients had the option of reminding staff to
wash their hands.
Hand washing is “critical for the prevention of infection,” she
added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1LiMzVW American Journal of Infection Control,
online March 6, 2015.
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reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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