[Hand hygiene and campaigns]

Hand disinfection is a well-known and appropriate practise for infection prevention. Hence, it is logical to encourage its compliance and to provide its sustainability in the daily routine of a hospital. Several campaigns address an improvement of this important prevention measure.

In the Hannover Medical School the health staffs on the intensive care units and bone marrow transplantation wards were examined for this topic by a standardised questionnaire. The aim was to detect deficiencies and the level of knowledge.

The forms were handed out to 838 health-care workers on 12 wards. 346 (41.2 %) were analysed. Inadequate hand disinfection due to a lack of time was the most common answer (43.1 %), followed by "there is no reason" (37.3 %). The alcoholic hand rub should be better available (50.3 %) and a continuing education programme should be provided (42.8 %) for improving hand hygiene practise.

The survey revealed the known risk factors for non-compliance. At this point, the national hand campaign "Aktion Saubere Hände" supports training courses by providing instruction materials for all participants. These materials are used for training health-care workers individually.