Low rate of hand hygiene compliance of clinical staff in Murunda District Hospital

Abstract

ABSTRACT Background: Hand hygiene is the single most important measure to prevent healthcare associated Infections (HAIs). However, it was observed a low compliance among clinical staff of Murunda Hospital. In working period, Medical doctors, Nurses and Midwives perform various tasks and procedures to a large number of patients, requiring extensive patient contact. Root cause: The main root cause identified include:Lack of knowledge regarding hand hygiene compliance and unavailability of hand hygiene equipment. Objective: To increase the hand hygiene compliance among clinical staff of Murunda Hospital from 40.08 % to 60% from October 2016 to April 2017. Design: A pre and post interventionalstudy design was used during this project. Intervention: Educating Clinical staff on Hand hygiene compliance using the organized training and availability of foot activated taps or pots (KANDAGIRUKARABE). Results: The hand hygiene compliance rate significantly increased from 40.08 % pre-intervention to 77 % post intervention, where there is an increase of 27% (p<0.001). Conclusion and recommendation The implementation was simple and cost-effective. Expanding its application to other hospitals in Rwanda should be considered in the following days. Our results showed that by using strategic problem solving approach and using data to identify and verify the root cause, we can set intervention and improve the hand washing compliance by using resources efficiently in order to decrease the infection rate in our hospital and can be applied to the other hospitals in quality improvement decisions.