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Handwashing and the patient experience
Some doctors wash their hands, but many don't:
Hand hygiene and sterile technique are so successfully maintained in operating rooms not because of the reminders that hang over scrub sinks, but because it is part of the culture and identity of those who work there. ...But such enthusiastic devotion to hand hygiene does not exist outside the operating room.
Plenty of high-tech solutions are being proposed, but like most user experience work, the challenge isn't with technology - it's in changing the organization.
(Amazing how hard it is to make a tiny, common-sense change in an established culture. As Pauline Chen writes, "If the national agency that defines excellence and standards of quality for more than 90 percent of hospitals cannot make good hand hygiene a pivotal part of the culture and identity of health care, then who can?")
Interested in more? Come to the Gel Health conference - October 22-23 in New York.
Will that be the Sanitizing Hand Gel Health conference?
This is such a small change to practice, that medical folks should be following anyway, it amazes me how hard it is to make this happen.
I've been asking now when I'm in a doctor's office whether they have a policy about handwashing in place. It's easier than the more direct "Have you washed your hands before seeing me?" and often leads to a useful conversation.