Leadership and Service Improvement: Addressing Hand Hygiene Compliance in Healthcare

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE IMPROVEMENT
Leadership and service improvement
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE IMPROVEMENT
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Details about the service improvement areas:.................................................................................2
Underlying cause behind the issue:.................................................................................................4
Role of integrated care and quality improvement strategies in promoting change:........................6
Proposed plan and the application of leadership theories to improve service provision related to
hand hygiene:...................................................................................................................................8
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................12
References:....................................................................................................................................14

2LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE IMPROVEMENT
Introduction:
With the changing dynamics of the health care system, the method of care delivery and
the way continuity of care should be maintained has changed. Rapid changes in health care
environment and evolution of health consumer’s expectation have driven health care leaders to
adapt new values and leadership skills to promote service improvement and enhance patient’s
experience in care. As many health care institutions struggle to maintain appropriate standards of
care, leadership is contemporary health care organization is regarded as a complex responsibility.
To promote organizational effectiveness, leadership in complex systems must be distributive and
collective (Boak et al. 2015). Hence, evaluation of different aspects of professional-client
relationship and identifying related improvements to current delivery structure will support in
providing more reliable and cost-effective care. Service improvement in high performing health
care systems have occurred by means of creation of effective framework and systems for
improving and making the change sustainable overtime (McSherry and Pearce 2016). With this
context, the main purpose of this report is to examine failure in quality of patient care because of
poor compliance to hand hygiene in hospital setting and use effective leadership theories and
professional identify concepts to determine the approach needed to mitigate quality issues and
promote service improvement. The report will also provide justification for the importance of
service user led improvement and the role of theories of change in achieving quality
improvement objectives.
Details about the service improvement areas:
Based on past experience of working in many health care setting, I have found that many
quality issues in patient care has emerged due to lack of compliance to basic safety protocol of

3LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE IMPROVEMENT
hand hygiene. Hand hygiene is a basic responsibility of all health care professionals while
entering into contact with patient (James et al. 2018). However, the current issue is that majority
of nurse have poor or moderate knowledge regarding hand hygiene and this becomes a vehicle
for transmission of infection among patients. Lack of knowledge related to hand hygiene also
contributes to low adherence to safety control protocols (Mahmood, Verma and Khan 2017).
Lack of implementation of proper hand hygiene guidelines among nurses has been the reason
behind high rate of hospital acquired infection (HAI), repeated hospitalization, increased medical
cost and poor health outcome of patient.
The significance of the issue is understood from the fact that over 1.4 million cases of
HAI are reported at any given time in hospitals and health care workers are the often the conduit
for the spread of such infection to other patients in care (World Health Organization 2019).
Several research studies have given evidence regarding the link between hand hygiene and
hospital acquired infection. Salama et al. (2013) established links between poor hand hygiene
and hospital acquired infection by investigating about the impact of hand hygiene compliance
rate on nosocomial infection in rates in a hospital. The study revealed that frequency of
nosocomial infection is associated with level of adherence to hand hygiene recommendations.
The review of the cause behind hospital acquired infection shows that hand hygiene is a low cost
action that could prevent spread and transmission of HAI related microbes to other patient. It is
an issue that could have been easily avoided if the nurses had adhered to hand hygiene regimen.
However, lack of adequate framework related to hand hygiene and proper scrutiny of infection
control practices among health care staffs leads to many quality issues and poor experience in
care. Hence, this form of failure in quality of patient care gives the implication to health care
leaders to critically evaluate the whole system of care and identify the cause behind the issue.