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Through survey-led interviews, health care staff recognizes that patients have different bathing techniques and need more education on chlorhexidine gluconate cleansing. Preliminary findings gathered will be used to develop and test electronic competency-based tools to ensure patients are provided with the same comprehensive instructions before using chlorhexidine gluconate bathing products.

Background Studies that examine the perceptions and behaviors of patients regarding patient hand hygiene rarely examine the viewpoint of patients about their hand hygiene behavior relative to current resources provided in the hospital. Methods Voluntary interviews that employed a 16-item survey tool were used among patients (N = 107) in outpatient clinics at post-admission visits. The survey was created using the Behavior Change Wheel, Capability, Opportunity, Motivation Behavior model. Patients were asked whether they brought hand sanitizer to the hospital, used hospital resources to clean their hands, and their perspective on patient hand hygiene importance compared with hospital staff, as well as their satisfaction or lack of satisfaction with hand hygiene independence. Results Most of the participants (65, 60.7%) reported that prior to being admitted to the hospital, they were able to maintain cleaning their hands with little or no difficulty. During their admission, only 21 (19.6%) of the participants reported needing little or no assistance. More than one-half of the participants, 34 (31.8%) and 23 (21.5%), respectively, reported, mostly or completely agreeing that the hand hygiene of the health care staff was more important than their own. Close to one-half of the participants (50, 46.7%) reported not being satisfied at all with their ability to maintain their hand hygiene in the hospital, whereas only 10 (9.3%) were very satisfied with their ability to maintain hand hygiene. Conclusions Findings from this study will enhance our understanding of how to incorporate inpatient hand hygiene into existing infection control programs in inpatient settings.

Independent living care for polypharmacy patients can be complicated in those situations with medications that are pro re nata (PRN, “as needed”). Such medication regimen may involve multiple dosing whereby specific drug contraindications might be easily overlooked by hospice and palliative care patients, or by those isolated and not in regular contact with care providers. The goal of this paper is to describe the development steps and current design of a system providing medication decision support for isolated patients. With an increased number of patients living alone or isolated - a situation exacerbated during the COVID19 pandemic – polypharmacy patients may be challenged when PRN (as needed) medications confound what might ordinarily be a routine medication schedule. Central to our medication management system design is the so-called “conversational agent” that when integrated with a natural language processing front- end and classification tree algorithm provide a dynamic framework for patient self-management of medications. Research on “patient need” revealed patients were more likely to embrace the system if the system were autonomous, secure, and not cloud-based.

Background We hypothesized that the addition of a novel verbal electronic audio reminder to an educational patient hand hygiene bundle would increase performance of self-managed patient hand hygiene. Methods We conducted a 2-group comparative effectiveness study randomly assigning participants to patient hand hygiene bundle 1 (n = 41), which included a video, a handout, and a personalized verbal electronic audio reminder (EAR) that prompted hand cleansing at 3 meal times, or patient hand hygiene bundle 2 (n = 34), which included the identical video and handout, but not the EAR. The primary outcome was alcohol-based hand sanitizer use based on weighing bottles of hand sanitizer. Results Participants that received the EAR averaged significantly more use of hand sanitizer product over the 3 days of the study (mean ± SD, 29.97 ± 17.13 g) than participants with no EAR (mean ± SD, 10.88 ± 9.27 g; t73 = 5.822; P ≤ .001). Conclusions The addition of a novel verbal EAR to a patient hand hygiene bundle resulted in a significant increase in patient hand hygiene performance. Our results suggest that simple audio technology can be used to improve patient self-management of hand hygiene. Future research is needed to determine if the technology can be used to promote other healthy behaviors, reduce infections, and improve patient-centered care without increasing the workload of health care workers.

Patient hand hygiene is a commonsense measure that has been associated with reductions in colonization or infection with bacterial and viral pathogens in quasi-experimental studies. We conducted a nonblinded pilot randomized trial to assess the impact of an educational patient hand hygiene intervention on acquisition of colonization by selected health care-associated pathogens in hospitalized patients. For patients with negative admission cultures, the intervention did not reduce the new acquisition of colonization by pathogens compared with that of standard care.

We conducted a randomized trial of a simple educational intervention encouraging patients to perform hand hygiene at 5 specific moments, including on entry of health care personnel into their room as a reminder of the importance of hand hygiene. The intervention resulted in a significant increase in patient hand hygiene.

We found that a majority of hospitalized patients were aware of the importance of hand hygiene, but observations indicated that performance of hand hygiene was uncommon. An intervention in which healthcare personnel facilitated hand hygiene at specific moments significantly increased performance of hand hygiene by patients.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2015;36(8): 986–989

Factors affecting annual compensation and professional development support have been studied for various healthcare professions. However, there is little understanding of these factors for infection preventionists (IPs).Using secondary data from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology 2015 MegaSurvey, we designed a descriptive, correlational study to describe IP annual compensation and professional development support. We tested for associations between demographic variables and annual compensation and investigated for predictors of higher annual compensation.Median salary for IPs was $75,000. IPs who indicated that their compensation was based on industry benchmarks reported a median salary of $85,000 (P .001). IPs with advanced degrees reported a median salary of $90,000. IPs with bachelor's degrees or lower reported a median salary of $50,000 (P .001). IPs with CIC® reported a median salary of $85,000. IPs without CIC® reported a median salary of $65,000 (P .001).This study can be used to develop recruitment and retention guidelines that lead to a well-educated, well-compensated, and competent IP workforce.

To facilitate patient hand hygiene, there is a need for easy-to-use products. In a survey of 100 patients, a single-use ethanol hand sanitizer packet took less time to access than a single-use moist towelette packet (3 vs 23 seconds) and was preferred by 74% of patients for mealtime hand hygiene. Performance of patient hand hygiene increased when a reminder was provided at the time of meal tray delivery.

We conducted a non-blinded randomized trial to determine the impact of a patient hand-hygiene intervention on contamination of hospitalized patients’ hands with healthcare-associated pathogens. Among patients with negative hand cultures on admission, recovery of pathogens from hands was significantly reduced in those receiving the intervention versus those receiving standard care.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2017;38:595–597

Background Patient hand hygiene may be a useful strategy to prevent acquisition of pathogens and to reduce the risk for transmission by colonized patients. Several studies demonstrate that patients and long-term-care facility (LTCF) residents may have difficulty using hand hygiene products that are provided; however, none of them measure feasibility for patients to use different hand hygiene products. Methods A convenience sample of 42 hospitalized patients and 46 LTCF residents was assessed for their ability to use 3 hand sanitizer products (8-oz pushdown pump bottle, 2-oz pocket-sized bottle with a reclosable lid, and alcohol-impregnated hand wipes). The time (seconds) required for accessing each product was compared among acute-care patients and LTCF residents. Participants provided feedback on which product they preferred and found easiest to use. Results Of 88 participants, 86 (97.7%) preferred the pushdown pump, 2 (2.3%) preferred the bottle with the reclosable lid, and none preferred the hand wipes. For both hospitalized patients and LTCF residents, the average time required to access the pushdown pump was significantly less than the time required to access the other products (pushdown pump, 0.45 seconds; bottle with reclosable lid, 3.86 seconds; and wipes, 5.66 seconds; P Conclusions Feasibility and ease of use should be considered in the selection of hand hygiene products for patients and LTCF residents.

Background Despite recognition that hospitalized patients carry pathogens on their hands and demonstrate poor hand hygiene practice, little attention has been given to interventions that increase hand hygiene practices. Studies that have attempted to improve patient hand hygiene practice lack sustainability due to dependability on healthcare staff, and no prior studies have tested ways to improve independent patient hand hygiene practice. One such approach is using a patient-centered multi-modal educational intervention and electronic voice-recorded reminder cue to promote self- management of hand hygiene. Methods This comparative effectiveness study tested two educationally-based approaches to improve patient hand hygiene in older adults hospitalized for 4 days for elective lower extremity orthopedic or podiatry surgery at a veterans’ hospital. Group 1 (n = 41) received an educational video, an educational handout and a voice-recorded electronic audio reminder (EAR) an active cue, which verbally reminded the participant to clean their hands 3 times a day (7am, 12 pm, 5pm). Group 2 (n = 34) received the educational video and handout without the EAR. There were no significant differences between the two randomly assigned groups in terms of age, ethnicity and sex. Results Figure 1 shows the daily difference in product consumption Day 0 to Day 3. The average product consumption of ABHR (alcohol-based hand rub) in Group 1 (EAR) was 29.97 grams (SD 17.13). Group 2 (No EAR) averaged 10.88 grams (9.27) (P < 0.0001). Comparing post-operative day (POD) 0 to POD 3, and controlling for covariates (Disability of Arm, Shoulder, and Hand [QuickDASH], Hand Grip Strength, Surgical Pain, MRSA in Nares, and Education), multivariate analyses indicated that the electronic audio reminder was a significant predictor (β=.468) of ABHR consumption, R2 = .39, R2adj. = .34, F (6, 68) = 7.265, P < .001. Conclusion This study demonstrated that a short educational intervention that included a video, a handout, and a verbal audio reminder has the potential to increase patient-centered infection prevention in the acute care settings without increasing the workload of healthcare workers. Findings can be used for future infection prevention studies in institutionalized patients to improve self-managed care. Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.