Effectiveness of Staff Reminder Systems in Improving Hand Hygiene Compliance

This study explores the effectiveness of staff reminder systems in improving hand hygiene compliance in acute care settings. It reviews and synthesizes evidence from primary research papers and provides recommendations for practices.

Effectiveness of Staff Reminder
Systems in Improving Hand Hygiene
Compliance

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Evidence Search Strategy................................................................................................................1
Reviewing and synthesising the evidence........................................................................................4
Recommendation for practices........................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

Introduction
Hand hygiene is considered as an important tool for preventing the spread of infections
related to health care among people. As per WHO, hands of health care workers (HCW) contains
the main bacteria that may spread infections among patients if they do not wash their hands
properly (Grove, Gray and Faan, 2019). The reason behind this is associated activities where
nurses and other HCWs are mainly engaged in practices like wound care, respiratory tract care,
intravascular catheter etc. Along with this, measuring pulse, temperature, blood pressure and
other also transmit bacteria like Staphylocossus, Klebsiella and other, on hands of HCW by
direct contact with patients. This may take more time in recovery of proper health of patients in
hospitals and refer to be main reason of long time stay over there. Therefore, to prevent
infections among patients, visitors and all surrounding people, health care workers need to
concern about proper hygiene.
Most healthcare institutions have policies related to hand hygiene in place which guide their
workers to do before and after contact with patients. For this purpose, a number of practices like
direct observation to monitor hygiene, technology which remained staff and nurses for
handwashing, equipment to use hand sanitizer etc. has been done in hospitals to reduce
contamination of infection. Among these practices, staff reminder system considers as best
practices where each health care worker reminds in short span of time for hand washing. This
would help in developing washing and cleaning hands to staff before and after make contact with
patients effectively. But still it has evaluated as per CDC data that approx. one in each 25
patients acquires infections (Healthcare associated infections) when they stay in hospitals for
well-being. Along with this, just because clinicians like nurses and other staff neglect such
practices i.e. hand hygiene, results in death of patients due to infections. To make argument on –
effectiveness of acute care setting and make recommendations for improvement of same, a
critical review and evidence based study is done in present report.
Evidence Search Strategy
Research question:
“In acute care setting, how Staff Reminder Systm as compared to other handwashing
practices reduces the risk of infection rates within last five years?”
Strategies:
1

In order to conduct the study on given nursing questions, only primary researchers papers
will be analysed, where to get these articles, Medscape source will be utilised. This site provides
only nursing related articles where, key words to find relevant article on present topic will be
used – Hand hygiene importance, handwashing practices, hand hygiene behaviour etc. This will
help in identifying article more easily.
Method of critical appraisal:
For critical analysis of different type of evidence, CASP Tool (Critical Appraisal Skills
Programme) will be utilised, that helps in developing skills for choosing the best article, making
sense of chosen research evidence as well as also aid in applying evidence for addressing present
research question.
Research papers:
Author
name
Title of paper Hierarchy
of
Evidence
Identification of research
domain
Qualitative / Quantita
Laskar,
A.M.,
Deepashree,
R., Bhat, P.,
Pottakkat,
B., Narayan,
S., Sastry,
A.S. and
Sneha, R.
A multimodal
intervention to
improve hand hygiene
compliance in a
tertiary care
center. American
journal of infection
control, 46(7),
pp.775-780.
2018 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29753498 Quantitative
McCalla, S.,
Reilly, M.,
Thomas, R.,
McSpedon-
Rai, D.,
McMahon,
An automated hand
hygiene compliance
system is associated
with decreased rates
of health care-
associated
2018 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30509358 Quantitative
2

L.A. and
Palumbo, M.
infections. American
journal of infection
control, 46(12),
pp.1381-1386
McDonald,
E.G., Smyth,
E., Smyth, L.
and Lee,
T.C.
Hand hygiene “hall
monitors”: leveraging
the Hawthorne
effect. American
journal of infection
control, 46(6),
pp.706-707.
2018 http://europepmc.org/article/MED/29361363 Quantitative
Yin, S., Lim,
P.K. and
Chan, Y.H.
Improving hand
hygiene
compliance with
patient zone
demarcation:
More than just
lines on the
floor. Journal of
Patient Safety
and Risk
Management,
p.251604351881
6148.
2019 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2516043518816148 Quantitative
Kallam, B.,
Pettitt-
Schieber, C.,
Owen, M.,
Asante, R.A.,
Darko, E.
and
Implementation
science in low-
resource settings:
using the
interactive
systems
framework to
2018 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29788245 Quantitative
3

Ramaswamy,
R.,
improve hand
hygiene in a
tertiary hospital
in
Ghana. Internatio
nal Journal for
Quality in Health
Care, 30(9),
p.724.
Reviewing and synthesising the evidence
For reviewing the evidences and make critical appraisals, the articles that are chosen are all
provide much relevant data. All articles are conducted on primary basis i.e. no secondary sources
were taken by researchers in the same. This would help in ensuring the accuracy and reliability
of articles which are explored from Medscape site. In evidence based practices, critical appraisal
is considered as best way for gathering specific information about strengths and weaknesses of
articles. Along with this, it may also help in determining the limitation of chosen articles as well.
Therefore, for determining the effectiveness of staff reminder system, as hand hygiene practices,
these evidence based articles will critically analyse in present study.
Recommendation for practices
Conclusion
4

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Grove, S. K., Gray, J. R., & Faan, P. R. (2019). Understanding Nursing Research: First South
Asia Edition, E-Book: Building an Evidence-Based Practice. Elsevier India.
Drisko, J. W., & Grady, M. D. (2019). Evidence-based practice in clinical social work. Springer.
Price, L., Melone, L., McLarnon, N., Bunyan, D., Kilpatrick, C., Flowers, P., & Reilly, J. (2018).
A systematic review to evaluate the evidence base for the World Health Organization's
adopted hand hygiene technique for reducing the microbial load on the hands of
healthcare workers. American journal of infection control, 46(7), 814-823.
Ataiyero, Y., Dyson, J., & Graham, M. (2019). Barriers to hand hygiene practices among health
care workers in sub-Saharan African countries: A narrative review. American journal of
infection control, 47(5), 565-573.
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