Hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers and hospital-acquired infections
Citation: Mouajou V, Adams K, DeLisle G, et al. Hand hygiene compliance in the prevention of hospital-acquired infections: a systematic review. Journal of Hospital Infection. 2022;119:33-48.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: No.
Funding sources: The authors reported that the review did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
What is this? Good hand hygiene among healthcare workers is important for preventing hospital-acquired infections.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of the association between hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers and the incidence of hospital-acquired infections in patients in healthcare settings in high-income countries. They restricted their searches to articles published in English or French before June 2019. They included 35 studies, which were from Canada (2 studies), France (1), Germany (1), Hong Kong (1), Israel (1), Italy (2), Japan (1), Kuwait (1), the Netherlands (2), Saudi Arabia (1), Spain (1), Switzerland (3), Taiwan (3) and USA (15).
What was found: In most included studies, the rates of hand hygiene compliance were between 60% and 70%. Few studies reported rates above 80%.
A hand hygiene compliance rate of 60% was the threshold for low hospital-acquired infections.
Most studies did not specify the pathogens that produced the hospital-acquired infections.
Implications: The authors of the review concluded that the hand hygiene compliance rate recommended by the World Health Organization (80%) is difficult to achieve, that additional efforts for increasing compliance above 60% might not produce substantial benefits and that high quality evidence is needed to support the implementation of specific targets for hand hygiene compliance rates.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence (high-income countries), occupation, education (training), social capital (healthcare setting) and time-dependent relationships (patient-provider interactions).
This summary was prepared by Yasmeen Saeed, checked by Ana Pizarro and Cristián Mansilla, and finalized by Mike Clarke.