Hand hygiene and the sequence of patient care

Abstract

Objective: To determine whether the order in which healthcare workers perform patient care tasks affects hand hygiene compliance. Design: For this retrospective analysis of data collected during the Strategies to Reduce Transmission of Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria in Intensive Care Units (STAR*ICU) study, we linked consecutive tasks healthcare workers performed into care sequences and identified task transitions: 2 consecutive task sequences and the intervening hand hygiene opportunity. We compared hand hygiene compliance rates and used multiple logistic regression to determine the adjusted odds for healthcare workers (HCWs) transitioning in a direction that increased or decreased the risk to patients if healthcare workers did not perform hand hygiene before the task and for HCWs contaminating their hands. Setting: The study was conducted in 17 adult surgical, medical, and medical-surgical intensive care units. Participants: HCWs in the STAR*ICU study units. Results: HCWs moved from cleaner to dirtier tasks during 5,303 transitions (34.7%) and from dirtier to cleaner tasks during 10,000 transitions (65.4%). Physicians (odds ratio [OR]: 1.50; P