About a year ago, I first heard of an upcoming technology that could monitor whether or not health care workers washed their hands upon entering and exiting patient rooms. Now that technology is in place at at least one hopsital in Alabama. Staff at the hospital wear a badge that is enabled to wirelessly monitor handwashing habits of staff. Staff members can be reminded to wash hands via text or email -- and even the hospital CEO is notified of the results.
It is well known that handwashing, upon entering and exiting a patient room is one key to decreasing hospital acquired -- also known as nosocomial -- infections. Is this type of monitoring the right way to acheive imporoved compliance? Studies have shown that only 40% of healthcare workers follow proper hand hygiene techniques, despite repeated education, reminders, etc.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123139695&ps=cprs
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If only 40% of health cre professionals only wash their hands going in to a patients room and when leaving then yes this is a good way to monitor that, and hopefully increase that 40%. I mean, with people actually conciously knowing that they are being monitored they will be more likely to actually wash their hands, decreasing the chances of getting a hospital aquired infection.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with Michael. There are a lot of advantages to having this monitoring in place. The only thing that I quesion is how practical is it to expect handwashing each and every time you enter and exit a room. Is this a reasonable expectation? Overall, I do think it is a good practice as long as they do not take it too far.
ReplyDeleteI agree with these two statements as well. I think it is great that hospitals are taking the initiative to become more sanitary by this hand-washing system. It is a great way to reduce the nosocomial infections. With approximately 100,000 Americans dying each year due to these preventable infections, something should be done. If simply washing your hands can prevent that many people from dying, then more hospitals should be enforcing this hand-washing method. It will be interesting to see if these badges start making their way into more hospitals throughout America. It may take some getting used to but would be very beneficial in the end by saving money and most importantly saving more lives.
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