Mrs. Katerina Perkovic1, Mrs. Nicola Timms1
1Western Health, St Albans, Australia
Biography:
Katerina Perkovic, Infection Control Consultant/ Education Lead, with over two decades of nursing experience, is currently undertaking a master’s in healthcare leadership and management.
Nicola Timms, Infection Prevention Nurse, qualified in 1997 with extensive nursing, education and quality experience in Australia and the UK.
Abstract:
Hand hygiene remains one of the most critical strategies for reducing healthcare-associated infections and ensuring patient safety. In Australia, the National Hand Hygiene Initiative (NHHI), led by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, provides online learning modules to equip healthcare workers with essential knowledge. However, individual staff members are responsible for providing evidence of module completion. This challenges organisations, particularly for employees working across multiple healthcare providers or frequently changing employers, as each organisation must obtain and monitor evidence of compliance separately. Furthermore, hand hygiene audits revealed suboptimal staff practices around glove use—an area not sufficiently addressed within the national NHHI e-learning content.
Compliance rates for hand hygiene training completion remained below established targets, placing an additional administrative burden on managers to follow up with staff and exacerbating staff inconvenience. In response, Western Health (WH) developed an internally tailored hand hygiene module delivered via its eLearning platform. WH became the first organisation to obtain licensing from the NHHI to utilise and adapt its framework and materials. This initiative provided two advantages: access to real-time data on staff completion rates, enhancing organisational oversight, and the opportunity to address specific local practice gaps, particularly around glove use.
We are meeting the hand hygiene compliance target for new starters, aligning with WH's commitment to Best Care. The next phase of the program will focus on reviewing annual compliance using real-time data.