Resident-Driven Quality Improvement Project in Perioperative Hand Hygiene.

Objectives: The goal of the project was to improve hand hygiene compliance in the perioperative setting while involving anesthesia residents in quality improvement. To achieve this goal, we facilitated direct trainee participation on patient safety and quality improvement initiatives. The result was a project for perioperative hand hygiene improvement conceived and led by anesthesiology residents.

Hand-hygiene compliance does not predict rates of resistant infections in critically ill surgical patients.

Background: Our institution had a major outbreak of multi-drug-resistant Acinetobacter (MDRA) in its general surgical and trauma intensive care units (ICUs) in 2011, requiring implementation of an aggressive infection-control response. We hypothesized that poor hand-hygiene compliance (HHC) may have contributed to the outbreak of MDRA. A response to the outbreak including aggressive environmental cleaning, cohorting, and increased hand hygiene compliance monitoring may have led to an increase in HHC after the outbreak and to a consequent decrease in the rates of infection by the nosocomial pathogens methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and Clostridium difficile.