HAND HYGIENE EDUCATION CAMPAIGN AT SOROTI REGIONAL REFERRAL HOSPITAL, UGANDA

Purpose of study Previous research done at Soroti Regional Referral Hospital (SRRH) identified that health care providers recognise the importance of hand hygiene, and despite this the compliance is still low. This project was an implementation of a WHO hand hygiene campaign at SRRH during May 2017.Our objective in the long term is to improve overall hand hygiene compliance and knowledge at SRRH; and in the short term to provide hand hygiene education and assess compliance in health care professionals. Methods used This campaign consisted of 3 parts: 1) Pre-intervention – observation of hand hygiene according to WHO observation surveys in 9 areas of SRRH; calculation of compliance (%) for physicians and nurses. 2) Workshops – education to physicians and head nurses on hand hygiene steps and the ‘Five Moments of Hand Hygiene’ were conducted over 5 sessions. 3) Post-intervention – observation of hand hygiene following similar methods as pre-intervention; discussion among stakeholders on barriers to hand hygiene. Summary of results Compliance rate pre-intervention was 15.7% (nurses 9.1%, physicians 28.6%). Compliance rate post-intervention was 19.7% (nurses 5.9%, physicians 28.8%). Hand sanitizer and education materials were provided to the staff during our education sessions; workplace reminders such as posters and stickers were also implemented. Some points brought up during stakeholder discussion included: lack of resources, transmission of micro-organisms, and lack of means to ensure that hand hygiene steps are followed appropriately. Conclusions This project demonstrated the feasibility of implementing a WHO campaign at SRRH. Overall compliance rate did show slight improvement post-intervention, but there were limitations due to the small size of this project. However, we noted that there are still gaps in hand hygiene at SRRH and that there is significant need for infection control improvement.