Impact of COVID-19 on hospital hand hygiene performance: a multicentre observational study using group electronic monitoring.

Background: Reliable reports on hand hygiene performance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic are lacking as most hospitals continue to rely on direct observation to measure this quality indicator. Using group electronic hand hygiene monitoring, we sought to assess the impact of COVID-19 on adherence to hand hygiene.

Methods: Across 12 Ontario hospitals (5 university and 7 community teaching hospitals), a group electronic hand hygiene monitoring system was installed before the pandemic to provide continuous measurement of hand hygiene adherence across 978 ward and 367 critical care beds.

Association Between Hospital Outbreaks and Hand Hygiene: Insights from Electronic Monitoring.

Background: Hand hygiene (HH) is an important patient safety measure linked to the prevention of health care-associated infection, yet how outbreaks affect HH performance has not been formally evaluated.

Methods: A controlled, interrupted time series was performed across 5 acute-care academic hospitals using group electronic monitoring. This system captures 100% of all hand sanitizer and soap dispenser activations via a wireless signal to a wireless hub; the number of activations is divided by a previously validated estimate of the number of daily HH opportunities per patient bed, multiplied by the hourly census of patients on the unit.

Lessons from across the pond: Student perspectives on the Internal Medicine clerkship experience at an Irish and Canadian medical school.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. There is an increasing number of Canadians studying medicine outside of Canada, with a large cohort studying in Ireland.

Do physicians clean their hands? Insights from a covert observational study.

Physicians are notorious for poor hand hygiene (HH) compliance. We wondered if lower performance by physicians compared with other health professionals might reflect differences in the Hawthorne effect. We introduced covert HH observers to see if performance differences between physicians and nurses decreased and to gain further insights into physician HH behaviors.