Hand Hygiene Compliance in Nursing Staff of Long-Term Care Facilities

Elderly residents of long-term care facilities are most at risk to acquire serious infections. Because of the relationship with nursing staff members, they are most likely to get an infection from a member of the nursing team. It is imperative that nursing staff members receive proper training related to hand hygiene in order to adhere to infection prevention and control guidelines. The goal of this project is to improve hand hygiene in nursing staff to reduce the number of resident infections recorded on the monthly infection surveillance report. This project utilizes a multi-faceted approach including a pre-test, presentation, post-test, return demonstration, and infection surveillance data to determine if the goal has been met. The pre- and post-tests are utilized to determine knowledge and attitudes related to hand hygiene. The return demonstration is used for skill evaluation in participants. Finally, infection surveillance data is used to determine success related to resident infections and outcomes.