from Hagel et al. 2015
published in Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 36(8):957-62
DOI 10.1017/ice.2015.93

Quantifying the Hawthorne effect in hand hygiene compliance through comparing direct observation with automated hand hygiene monitoring

The Hawthorne effect has a considerable influence on the healthcare workers’ hand hygiene behaviour

In the prospective observational study the hand hygiene compliance was determined by two methods: a system of 70 electronic dosing dispensers equipped with counter registered when and how often every single dispenser was actuated and a trained study assistant who counted the hand disinfection procedures and eplained at beginning of every observation the purpose of the investigation.A total of 3 978 situations requiring hand disinfection in accordance with the 5 Moments model were observed. In 2 034 of these cases, healthcare workers actually disinfected their hands. Thus, the compliance was 51 %. Only 99 of 2 113 hand disinfection procedures (5 %) were not performed according to the 5 Moments.