Another positive impact has been that people feel more empowered
to speak up. We've had nursing assistants telling surgeons and anes-
thesia providers, Hey, you touched that; you need to wash your
hands. Or, I notice you took off your gloves. Can I help you? There's
a hand pump right there. Most of the time people appreciate being
reminded. Sometimes all it takes is that gentle reminder. And of
course, when we see non-compliance, we want to intervene at that
moment, to prevent it from going further.
The other key stat
How accurate is our data? It's an ongoing concern in the infection con-
trol realm as to how hand hygiene data are collected. And as noted,
when "secret" observers aren't so secret, that can skew the data. But
even if there's some doubt about our better-than-95% success rate, the
other statistic we like to focus on is the almost 10,000 observations
we're generating every month. No one can dispute that if you have
people thinking and talking about hand hygiene 10,000 times a month,
that's a tremendous intervention and a tremendous improvement.
OSM
Ms. Brown (jeanie.brown@unchealth.unc.edu), Ms. Meyers (crystal.mey-
ers@unchealth.unc.edu) and Ms. Steelman
(gretchen.steelman@unchealth.unc.edu) are clinical nurses at UNC
Hospitals in Chapel Hill, N.C.
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