Improving Hand Hygiene through Education
Danielle Pizzoferrato
NUR/598- Nursing Research Utilization
February 10, 2014
Professor Maria Revell

Improving Hand Hygiene through Education
Section C: Research Support
There has been a plethora of research compiled in regards to hand hygiene and infection control. This research has been the driving force behind evidenced based practice for years and has helped revolutionize effective infection control methods. There are still many gaps to be filled. One of the biggest happens to be improving compliance rates among hand hygiene. This has been classified as a problem, but there is not a large array of research on specific interventions. One of the interventions that have been put under the microscope is the effect that education plays on change behavior to increase hand hygiene compliance. The following research articles emphasize this intervention.
Article 1 The first article was entitled “Increasing Hand Hygiene Compliance Requires Culture Change” written by Treon, Kelley, Kneebone, and Miles (2007). The purpose of this research focused on designing an innovative educational intervention to increase overall awareness of infection control practices, and to increase overall hand hygiene compliance. The research question proposed was looking to determine if education can cause change behavior and increase hand hygiene adherence. The design of this research consisted of both qualitative and quantitative research providing a blended project. Likert surveys about infection control were given prior to the educational intervention to obtain a baseline and needs assessment. Then, an interactive hand culturing experience took place to show culture and organisms that end up on hands after touching common surface. Finally, a “Glow-Germ” experiment was performed to visually examine the cleanliness of the volunteer’s hands