Introduction Hand washing or hand hygiene

Running head: HAND HYGIENE
Hand Hygiene
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Introduction
Hand washing or hand hygiene is the act of cleaning an individual’s hand for the purpose
of removing various unhygienic substances from the hand. Hand washing has been considered
as a simple but very effective intervention to manage the incidence of hospital-acquired
infections (HAI) and other kinds of infection. HAIs are the kind of diseases which a person
acquires during his/her stay in the hospital. HAI is a very critical disease that has an impact on
millions of people all around the world. Along with the HAIs, there is a high incidence of several
other harmful diseases. HAIs can cause disaster in several forms, such as rise in different other
conditions, increase in the duration of stay in the healthcare facility, can cause physical or mental
disability, as a result, increases the healthcare costs that become a burden on the family
members. Even though some of the diseases are preventable, some take time to get better. People
get HAIs when there is the transmission of the microorganisms that are born in the healthcare
setting and through the direct or indirect touch of contaminated fluids or air and pathogen
carriers such as mosquito or houseflies. According to the study of Marchaim & Kaye (2017),
healthcare professionals usually come in contact with Gram-negative bacilli, S. aureus,
enterococci or C. difficile. As a result, they dirty their hands or gloves, and through that, it is
transferred to other individuals.
Thus, various research papers have agreed on the fact that hand hygiene is like a counter-
strategy to prevent the occurrence of the HAIs. Though even being a simple and effective
strategy, there is a lack of compliance of hand hygiene by the nursing staff, and it is the primary
reason behind the high incidence rate of the HAIs. Thus, this article will be divided into three
parts. Starting with the selection of a range of research studies relevant to the hand hygiene, then

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selecting one research and doing a critical appraisal using the CASP tool, and finally
recommending different interventions to prevent or reduce the occurrence of HAIs and to
increase the compliance rate of hand hygiene by the healthcare members.
Search Strategy
Search strategy is a method to search for different articles based on a single topic or a research
question. To ease the search process there are key terms, inclusion and exclusion criteria based
upon research articles are searched. To search for the relevant articles it is necessary to form a
research question. The PICO strategy will be used to develop the question.
PICO
 P – The problem is the hospital-acquired infections (HAI)
 I – Counter strategy is hand hygiene
 C - No hand hygiene
 O – Reduction in the incidence rate of HAI
Does the hand hygiene intervention have the ability to decrease the incidence rate of HAI by
increasing the compliance of hand hygiene among the healthcare?
There are several online databases like NCBI, PubMed, Cinahl and Google Scholar and official
websites where search strategy is implemented to identify the papers. For the following article
key terms used were hand hygiene, hand washing and hospital-acquired infections. The inclusion
criteria were that the research studies chosen should be relevant to the key terms, should be
published within the last 10 years, and should be published in English language. Exclusion of the

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research studies were based on the papers selected older than the last 10 years, and if published
in any other language.
Author Year Title Hierarchy
Mahida, N. 2016 Hand hygiene compliance: are we
kidding ourselves?.
Synopses
Gould, D. J., Moralejo, D., Drey,
N., Chudleigh, J. H., & Taljaard,
M.
2017 Interventions to improve hand hygiene
compliance in patient care
Syntheses
Erasmus, V., Daha, T. J., Brug,
H., Richardus, J. H., Behrendt,
M. D., Vos, M. C., & van Beeck,
E. F.
2010 Systematic review of studies on
compliance with hand hygiene guidelines
in hospital care
Syntheses
Fuller, C., Savage, J., Besser, S.,
Hayward, A., Cookson, B.,
Cooper, B., & Stone, S.
2011 “The dirty hand in the latex glove”: a
study of hand hygiene compliance when
gloves are worn
Study
Randle, J., Arthur, A., &
Vaughan, N.
2010 Twenty-four-hour observational study of
hospital hand hygiene compliance
Study
The chosen articles are –
1. Fuller, C., Savage, J., Besser, S., Hayward, A., Cookson, B., Cooper, B., & Stone, S. (2011).
“The dirty hand in the latex glove”: a study of hand hygiene compliance when gloves are
worn. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, 32(12), 1194-1199.
2. Gould, D. J., Moralejo, D., Drey, N., Chudleigh, J. H., & Taljaard, M. (2017). Interventions
to improve hand hygiene compliance in patient care. Cochrane database of systematic
reviews, (9).
3. Mahida, N. (2016). Hand hygiene compliance: are we kidding ourselves?. Journal of hospital
infection, 92(4), 307-308.
4. Randle, J., Arthur, A., & Vaughan, N. (2010). Twenty-four-hour observational study of
hospital hand hygiene compliance. Journal of Hospital Infection, 76(3), 252-255.