| The current study has two aims:1. To improve adherence to guidelines for hand hygiene in nurses; 2. To add to the body of knowledge on effective strategies for implementing guidelines in health care settings in general, and to specifically contribute to (a) knowledge on effective implementation of hand hygiene guidelines and (b) knowledge on the effects of social influence based implementation activities.The following research questions are answered to address these aims: 1. Does a state of the art implementation of guidelines for hand hygiene, derived from the international literature, result in improvement in hand hygiene adherence rates as observed in nurses in Dutch hospital care? Do these improvements sustain?2. What is the additional effect on hand hygiene adherence rates of implementation acitivities using principles of social influence? Samenvatting OBJECTIVE -Hand hygiene prescriptions are the most important measure in the prevention of hospital aquired infections (Larson 1988, 1995). Yet compliance rates are generally below 50% of all opportunities for hand hygiene adherence (Pittet et al. 2000). This proposal will address the short- and long term effects of alternative strategies for promoting hand hygiene in hospital nurses. DESIGN - The study uses a prospective, cluster randomised trial (2x30 hospital wards) for comparison of the two strategies. Comparison with usual care (no strategy) will be enabled by collecting data for a reference period, prior to the trial. Data are collected at four points in time, with 6 month intervals; 3000 opportunities for hand hygiene adherence in nursing wards are observed at each time point.POPULATION - Hospital nurses, involved in in-patient care.INTERVENTION - Guidelines for Hand Hygiene (WHO 2005) are implemented in this study.IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES - Firstly, a state of the art strategy -derived from the literature- is evaluated. In addition an extended strategy is studied. Whereas the state of the art strategy focusses on determinants at the individual and organisational level, the extended strategy will add strategies based on social influence in groups. The added value of implementation activities based on social influence will thus be tested.MAIN OUTCOME - Percentage of adherence in opportunities for hand hygiene according to the WHO-guideline.DATA ANALYSES / POWER - Differences between the strategies are evaluated by comparing the results at the end of the strategies, using random effects regression models, with baseline scores as covariates and ward and nurse as random factor. Calculating from 80% power, two-sided alpha=.05, a ward-ICC of 0.05 and a nurse-ICC of 0.6, 3000 observations per time point will be sufficient to test the proposed increase in adherence from 45% to 60% for the state of the art strategy and to 70% for the extended strategy.ECONOMIC EVALUATION - The economic evaluation uses a hospital perspective. The decision criterion on which the most efficient implementation strategy will be selected is the incremental cost per gained percentage of adherence. |