Hand hygiene: Time to report individual rates?
'The most awful shortcoming in patient safety'
Looking at the historically low compliance numbers surrounding hand hygiene, Stephen Weber, MD, Joint Commission consultant and chief health care epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, can only shake his head.
"I think it's the most awful shortcoming in patient safety and hospital quality, at least for the last half century and I guess going back before that," he says. "To go to national meetings that I have with infection control folks and have a leading authority in the field get up and say, 'Wake up folks; we'll never get to 100% [compliance on hand hygiene].' It seems preposterous to me that we're giving up on this."
At the University of Chicago, Weber and colleagues are looking at strategies to automatically detect hand hygiene adherence, one of which is radiofrequency identifier tags.
"It's remarkable how we've shied away from the idea of giving individual and direct feedback," he says. "Our viewpoint is to provide individual feedback. It's remarkable that some of the groups that are doing similar work are saying, 'Well, we would never detect down to the individual health care worker level.
Hand hygiene: Time to report individual rates?
'The most awful shortcoming in patient safety'
Looking at the historically low compliance numbers surrounding hand hygiene, Stephen Weber, MD, Joint Commission consultant and chief health care epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, can only shake his head.
"I think it's the most awful shortcoming in patient safety and hospital quality, at least for the last half century and I guess going back before that," he says. "To go to national meetings that I have with infection control folks and have a leading authority in the field get up and say, 'Wake up folks; we'll never get to 100% [compliance on hand hygiene].' It seems preposterous to me that we're giving up on this."
At the University of Chicago, Weber and colleagues are looking at strategies to automatically detect hand hygiene adherence, one of which is radiofrequency identifier tags.
"It's remarkable how we've shied away from the idea of giving individual and direct feedback," he says. "Our viewpoint is to provide individual feedback. It's remarkable that some of the groups that are doing similar work are saying, 'Well, we would never detect down to the individual health care worker level. We'd never want to get involved in that privacy issue.' I think that's just silly. When I orient the medical students, I say, 'If you came into a patient room and you saw the dean of students punching the patient in the face, would you say anything about it?' And I think everybody would," Weber says.
We'd never want to get involved in that privacy issue.' I think that's just silly. When I orient the medical students, I say, 'If you came into a patient room and you saw the dean of students punching the patient in the face, would you say anything about it?' And I think everybody would," Weber says. Looking at the historically low compliance numbers surrounding hand hygiene, Stephen Weber, MD, Joint Commission consultant and chief health care epidemiologist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, can only shake his head.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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