A study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Infection Control found that two-thirds of a class of German medical students had an imperfect understanding of hand hygiene requirements.
For their study, researchers at Hannover (Germany) Medical School's Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hospital Epidemiology quizzed 85 third-year medical students with 7 scenarios, 5 of which would require surgical staffers to wash or sanitize their hands afterward and 2 of which wouldn't.
The situations in which hand hygiene was indicated were: before contact with a patient, before preparing intravenous fluids, after removing gloves, after contact with a patient's bed and after contact with vomit. The situations in which hand hygiene was not indicated were during "regular nursing" and before touching a urine drainage system.
Only 33 percent correctly identified all 5 must-wash scenarios. Only 21 percent correctly identified the washing-not-required scenarios as well as the must-wash ones. Incidentally, researchers noted, a separate survey found a significantly higher rate of compliance with hand hygiene protocols among nursing students than among medical students.
"There is no doubt that we need to improve the overall attitude toward the use of alcohol-based hand rub in hospitals," the authors advise. "To achieve this goal, the adequate behavior of so-called 'role models' is of particular importance."
David Bernard
