PA hospital uses spies to track hand hygiene
Patient Safety Monitor Alert
March 10, 2010
Abington (PA) Memorial Hospital (AMH) used some nurses as spies in its effort to improve hand washing, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. AMH has been using the spy technique to gather information about hand washing rates at the facility for the past two years. A national idea that had been gaining traction, "spying" on fellow colleagues has become one way to monitor how often staff members actually appropriately clean their hands.
AMH has a clear policy concerning hand hygiene, and those who were recruited to act as spies noted whether staff members complied with that policy, according to the Inquirer. Recruiting nurses to monitor hand hygiene rates was a challenge, as many nurses were not fond of the idea of tracking their fellow staff members' behaviors. However, the leader of the team said that she now likes her job because it has produced results for the hospital, which now has a hand hygiene compliance rate of 88%, up from 31% in December 2007.
