Ms Pippa McDermid1, Professor Holly Seale1, Dr Md. Saiful Islam1, A/Prof Jason Kwong2,3
1UNSW Sydney, Kensington, Australia, 2University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 3Austin Health, Heidelberg, Australia
Biography:
Pippa McDermid is a PhD candidate and social science researcher at the School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney. Her mixed-methods research focuses on infection control, vaccine uptake, and public health communication with multicultural communities. Using participatory and interdisciplinary approaches, her current work aims to inform infection prevention communication and practice.
Abstract:
Introduction
Current hand hygiene (HH) research, resources, and promotion are almost exclusively focused on improving healthcare worker HH behaviours. With low HH compliance rates of patients and visitors, along with preliminary evidence linking patient HH to rates of healthcare associated infection (HAI), this research has the potential to fill this gap with aims to enhance patient and visitor HH.
Methods
A mixed-method, two-phase project was undertaken. In Phase 1, we conducted semi-structured-interviews (SSIs) at a large Sydney hospital, exploring the HH behaviours, attitudes, and perspectives of patients and visitors, as well as staff perceptions of patient and visitor HH, and infection prevention and control (IPC) behaviours. Findings from the interviews, together with existing evidence, informed Phase 2, which involved co-design workshops with health consumers, carers, and IPC professionals. Using participatory methods, an intervention was developed and refined, specifically targeted at improving patient and visitor HH.
Results
A total of 30 participated in SSIs and 11 in co-design workshops. Key themes influencing HH of patients and visitors included shared responsibility in IPC practices, understanding and engagement with IPC practices and HH, staff engagement with patients and visitors, the impact of the hospital environment and other key barriers, and future strategies. Co-design workshops produced a final multimodal intervention, which incorporates environmental modifications, education, signage, and organisational strategies.
Conclusion
Patients, visitors, and hospital staff identified environmental, knowledge, engagement, and organisational factors influencing hand hygiene practice. These findings informed a co-designed multimodal intervention targeting individual and system level barriers to enhance HH performance. This work will be evaluated for acceptability, feasibility, and implementation.