No quick fix for dirty hands in U.K. hospitals: study

Apr 17, 2007

CHICAGO (Reuters), Apr 18 - Hand washing is something most people learned about as children, but a British study finds that health workers are not faithful about washing their hands and few strategies to improve hygiene have worked.

Infections spread by health workers are a major cause of illness and death, and simple hand washing is shown to be one of the best ways to prevent it.

In Britain, 10% of patients develop healthcare-associated infections, which kill 5,000 people each year at a cost of $1.86 billion a year, the researchers said.

In the U.S., health workers' dirty hands infect about 5% of patients at a cost of $4.5 billion a year, they said.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Dinah Gould of the School of Nursing and Midwifery at City University in London performed a systematic review to determine whether strategies to improve hand hygiene are effective.

The researchers, whose study was published in this week's Cochrane Library Newsletter, found only two trials that were even worth consideration and both were of poor quality.

Based on those, they concluded that a single teaching session or seminar was not likely to affect hand-washing behavior, even in the short term.

"We desperately need some good research that will begin to show which interventions can bring about change in people's behavior," Gould said in a statement.

"In addition to preventing unnecessary spread of disease, good hand hygiene is highly desirable on aesthetic grounds alone," she said.

"It forms an important indicator of the quality of healthcare and should continue to be promoted in all clinical settings," she added.

Last Updated: 2007-04-18 10:00:55 -0400 (Reuters Health)

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