Use of a verbal electronic audio reminder with a patient hand hygiene bundle to increase independent patient hand hygiene practices of older adults in an acute care setting

• Published in: American journal of infection control Vol. 46; no. 6; pp. 610 - 616
• Main Authors: Knighton, Shanina C., Dolansky, Mary, Donskey, Curtis, Warner, Camille, Rai, Herleen, Higgins, Patricia A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.06.2018
• Subjects: Aged; Aged, 80 and over; behavior change; Electronics, Medical - instrumentation; Female; Hand Disinfection - methods; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Patient hand hygiene; Reminder Systems - instrumentation; reminders; Self Administration - statistics & numerical data; reminders; Patient hand hygiene; behavior change
• ISSN: 0196-6553; 1527-3296
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ajic.2018.01.005

•Hospitalized patients demonstrate poor hand hygiene practice and face practice barriers.•Very few studies support independent patient hand hygiene practice.•The addition of a verbal electronic audio reminder to an education bundle is proposed.•Independent patient hand hygiene can be improved with the use of a verbal reminder. We hypothesized that the addition of a novel verbal electronic audio reminder to an educational patient hand hygiene bundle would increase performance of self-managed patient hand hygiene. We conducted a 2-group comparative effectiveness study randomly assigning participants to patient hand hygiene bundle 1 (n = 41), which included a video, a handout, and a personalized verbal electronic audio reminder (EAR) that prompted hand cleansing at 3 meal times, or patient hand hygiene bundle 2 (n = 34), which included the identical video and handout, but not the EAR. The primary outcome was alcohol-based hand sanitizer use based on weighing bottles of hand sanitizer. Participants that received the EAR averaged significantly more use of hand sanitizer product over the 3 days of the study (mean ± SD, 29.97 ± 17.13 g) than participants with no EAR (mean ± SD, 10.88 ± 9.27 g; t73 = 5.822; P ≤ .001). The addition of a novel verbal EAR to a patient hand hygiene bundle resulted in a significant increase in patient hand hygiene performance. Our results suggest that simple audio technology can be used to improve patient self-management of hand hygiene. Future research is needed to determine if the technology can be used to promote other healthy behaviors, reduce infections, and improve patient-centered care without increasing the workload of health care workers.