Hand washing and hospitals: There's an app for that

Eastern Health plans to use technology to promote hand hygiene in its facilities.

Starting this month, 167 electronic bulletin boards will be installed in acute, long-term care and outpatient areas throughout the region. The screens will show how often doctors and nurses wash their hands. 

Trained auditors, who also work in that unit, will watch their colleagues, and use an app on a tablet to record whether or not a physician or nurse washed their hands before and after seeing patients.

That unit's real-time percentage will then be posted, and constantly updated, on the screen for staff and the public to see. 

"Knowledge is power," said Amy Howard, regional director for infection prevention and control. "And if you don't know what your rates are, how are you going to work to improve it?" 

Howard said improvement is definitely needed. For years, Eastern Health's overall hand hygiene compliance percentage has hovered in the high 40s to low 50s. Too low when the stakes are so high.

"Hand washing is the single most important method to stop the spread of infection," said Howard. "It's the simplest thing we can do. It's quick, it's easy and it has a big impact for our patients and staff for them not getting hospital-acquired infections."

Howard said the poor showing in hand hygiene needed action. So they tried electronic auditing as a pilot project. It got results.

"Most units improved over 100 per cent from their baseline rates, which was excellent in a year." 

No complaints

Registered Nurses' Union president Debbie Forward hasn't heard any complaints from members about this new program.

"I think reminders are always positive," said Forward. "I think this is about reporting, openness and transparency with the public, which I think is really important in our health care system."

But is publicly displaying the compliance rate shaming staff into submission? Forward doesn't think so.

"I don't look at it as an opportunity to shame people, I look at it as an opportunity to educate people. We're all taught the importance of that hygiene practice just like we're taught the rules of the road…the police go around and watch us to make sure we're practicing the good techniques on a day-to-day basis."

"Sometimes we forget, and we need those reminders."

Howard expects the program will start some healthy competition between departments. 

She believes it's not about embarrassment, it's about empowerment.

"It's us saying you own it, take ownership of these results, take ownership of what you're doing to improve those results, and I think that's really going to work."

The $400,000 program has been funded through health care foundations and auxiliaries in the region.

Forward considers that an important detail.

"I wouldn't want to see provincial government money used to put up monitors in facilities when we're understaffing units."

The monitors will not be used exclusively for hand washing rates. Howard said the screens are also an opportunity to communicate other health information to the public and staff.