Developing professional habits of hand hygiene in intensive care settings: An action-research intervention

To explore perceptions and unconscious psychological processes underlying handwashing behaviours of intensive care nurses, to implement organisational innovations for improving hand hygiene in clinical practice.

An action-research intervention was performed in 2012 and 2013 in the intensive care unit of a public hospital in Italy, consisting of: structured interviews, semantic analysis, development and validation of a questionnaire, team discussion, project design and implementation. Five general workers, 16 staff nurses and 53 nurse students participated in the various stages.

Social handwashing emerged as a structured and efficient habit, which follows automatically the pattern "cue/behaviour/gratification" when hands are perceived as "dirty". The perception of "dirt" starts unconsciously the process of social washing also in professional settings. Professional handwashing is perceived as goal-directed. The main concern identified is the fact that washing hands requires too much time to be performed in a setting of urgency. These findings addressed participants to develop a professional "habit-directed" hand hygiene procedure, to be implemented at beginning of workshifts.

Handwashing is a ritualistic behaviour driven by deep and unconscious patterns, and social habits affect professional practice. Creating professional habits of hand hygiene could be a key solution to improve compliance in intensive care settings.