Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For departments that
don't allow phones, we also have an easy-to-use electronic survey
tool. When you pull up the survey page, you can put in 5 or 10 obser-
vations in a couple of minutes or less. We wanted to make sure there
was no undue burden on anyone.
Once people saw how easy it was — that they could knock out sev-
eral observations in a very short period of time — we had no prob-
lems. Everyone is encouraged to report both compliance and non-
compliance, and we do things to keep the initiative fresh and inter-
esting, like entering the names of people who provide feedback into
a drawing, and giving them more entries if they provide feedback on
people in a different job class than their own. The continued engage-
ment is evident from the fact that we're still getting almost 10,000
observations every month. We collect the data in the infection con-
trol department and produce a report for everyone, so everyone is
incentivized to keep it going.
Seizing opportunities
The focus is on hand hygiene opportunities. Initially we asked people
to observe whether staff members were washing their hands when
they went into and out of a patient's room or space. In the second
year, we wanted to add an OR piece, so we started looking for other
meaningful points in time. We decided to base the observation on
whether people washed their hands when they put gloves on and took
them off. Of course, in pre-op areas and the PACU, we still use the tra-
ditional in and out of the patient's space as the key opportunity.
We ask observers to submit their names, but not the names of the
people they observe. This isn't about turning people in. It's about rais-
ing awareness, and having people remember that anyone could be
watching them at any time.
Infection Prevention
IP
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