Deploying electronic hand hygiene monitoring systems intermittently helps prevent a decline in staff participation, according to research published in the American Journal of Infection Control.
Researchers deployed an electronic monitoring system recording hand hygiene behavior three times in six-month intervals, with each deployment time lasting four consecutive weeks. The systems were deployed in October 2016, April 2017 and October 2017, and 76,130 total opportunities were recorded.
The key details to know:
1. Hand hygiene performance was 67.43 overall, with a total of 515,516 hand hygiene opportunities recorded.
2. Participation was high during deployment periods and declined over the course of the deployment.
3. At the beginning of each deployment, participation increased.
Researchers concluded, "Intermittent deployment of an electronic monitoring intervention counteracts potential declines in participation rates sometimes seen with continuous system use. However, adoption of this strategy requires the acceptance of lower periods of performance between each deployment."
