Environmental Engineering to Increase Hand-Hygiene Compliance
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Environmental Engineering to Increase Hand-Hygiene Compliance
IRAS ID
212973
Contact name
I Vlaev
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Heart of England Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
86357, EDGE ID
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 1 months, 31 days
Research summary
Every year over 300,000 patients in England suffer a hospital acquired infection(HAI). Many HAIs are avoidable through better hand-hygiene. Unfortunately, despite its widely known importance, and universal reminder notices, hospital hand-hygiene protocol compliance (use of hand disinfectants) is typically less than 50%. Commonly used educational methods, while effective in the short-term, have not produced long-term increases in hand-hygiene compliance.
The present study aims to increase hospital hand-hygiene through psychological primes. A psychological prime is a stimulus that can alter people's behaviour without their awareness. Two primes were demonstrated to increase hand-hygiene compliance in a single hospital ward in the USA: (1) a citrus smell, which is thought to remind people of similar smelling cleaning products and (2) a picture of a person’s eyes, which is thought to make people feel watched and therefore remind them to comply with hand-hygiene protocols. However, the interventions only took place over four non-consecutive days so it is unclear of the results would be sustained over a longer time period. Also it is possible that a combination of smell and eyes maybe more effective.
Our trial will investigate whether similar results can be achieved in a UK hospital setting over a longer time period and whether a combination of smell and eyes is more effective than either alone.
Our trial will be conducted in four UK wards. For periods of six weeks each ward will be exposed to no intervention, a clean smell, eyes or eyes and a clean smell. During these periods an observer will count the number of people who enter the ward and the number of occasions on which they follow hand hygiene protocol. We will compare the proportion of persons following protocol in each six week period.
REC name
South Central - Oxford C Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/SC/0554
Date of REC Opinion
10 Oct 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion