Dr Jude Robinson has written this guest post in preparation for Journal Club on Wednesday this week (register here).
I am looking forward to this week’s journal club where I will be discussing the following paper by Watanabe et al. (2025), “The effect of a patient empowerment hand hygiene programme: a single-centre study in Japan”, investigates whether patient involvement can improve healthcare worker (HCW) compliance with hand hygiene (HH) at Tokyo Medical University Hospital.
Continue readingWe can have a long discussion about whether we should routinely collect observational hand hygiene compliance information – I think we should, but others take a different view. But if we decide to collect routine hand hygiene compliance information, there are limitations of what is achievable. A recent study in JHI evaluated using patients as hand hygiene observers in an outpatient setting, which seemed to work pretty well.
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Allow me to set the scene: I was visiting an elderly relative in an NHS hospital recently (they would deny being elderly – but I’m afraid it is now true). I witnessed a healthcare worker moving efficiently from bed to bed examining each patient (including direct patient contact) to take observations without any hand hygiene between patients and without decontamination of the reusable blood-pressure cuff. I explained to my relative the need to challenge this behaviour. My relative asked – almost pleaded with me – not to intervene saying “you’ll clear off and they’ll be left caring for me overnight”. So, did I have the courage to defy my relative and challenge this behaviour?
Reflections on Infection Prevention and Control 