Measuring Hand Hygiene Adherence: Making The What, Why And How Decisions - Joint Commission, Partners Release Free Educational Monograph

Main Category: MRSA / Drug Resistance
Also Included In: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 15 Apr 2009 - 7:00 PDT

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Preventing infections is critical to patient safety. Effective hand hygiene practices have long been recognized as the most important way to reduce the transmission of potentially deadly germs in health care settings. To help health care organizations target their efforts in measuring hygiene performance, The Joint Commission is releasing "Measuring Hand Hygiene Adherence: Overcoming the Challenges."

The monograph is the result of a two-year collaboration with major infection control leadership organizations in the United States and abroad to identify effective approaches for measuring adherence to hand hygiene guidelines in health care organizations. In addition to The Joint Commission, the participating organizations include the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. (APIC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the World Health Organization (WHO) World Alliance for Patient Safety, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases (NFID).

Measuring compliance with hand hygiene practices has long been complicated because of the need to monitor the practices of many different care providers in numerous locations for sufficient periods of time. Without standardized approaches to measuring hand hygiene performance, it is impossible to determine whether overall performance is improving, deteriorating or unchanged as new strategic interventions are introduced. The Joint Commission's National Patient Safety Goals require accredited organizations to follow recognized hand hygiene guidelines; however, studies continue to show that adherence to these guidelines is lacking. This is due, in part, to the variation in approaches to measurement, which makes rates of adherence difficult to compare.

The monograph provides a framework to help health care workers make necessary decisions about when, why and how to measure compliance with hand hygiene. The monograph systematically reviews the strengths and weaknesses of commonly used approaches. Examples of measurement methods and tools in the monograph, which also includes references to evidence-based guidelines and published literature, were submitted by organizations through the Consensus Measurement in Hand Hygiene project. The project was supported by an unrestricted educational grant from GOJO Industries, Akron, Ohio.

"Measuring hand hygiene adherence is not a simple matter," says Jerod M. Loeb, Ph.D., executive vice president, Division of Quality Measurement and Research, The Joint Commission. "The monograph can help health care organizations more effectively measure compliance and strengthen improvement activities that save lives and money."

"Monitoring hand hygiene is useful only if the methods are valid and reliable and the results are widely disseminated and used to improve practice," says Elaine Larson, R.N., Ph.D., F.A.A.N., C.I.C., scientific advisor for the project and associate dean for research at the Columbia University School of Nursing, New York. "This Monograph will be an invaluable resource to institutions struggling to do it right." Electronic copies of the monograph are available.

Founded in 1951, The Joint Commission seeks to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 16,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including more than 8,000 hospitals and home care organizations, and more than 6,200 other health care organizations that provide long term care, behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services. In addition, The Joint Commission also provides certification of more than 600 disease-specific care programs, primary stroke centers, and health care staffing services. An independent, not-for-profit organization, The Joint Commission is the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care.

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The Joint Commission

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