In honour of #safesurgicalhands day, I thought I would highlight a shocking fairly recent study of hand hygiene compliance among anaesthetists. The study identified a huge number of hand hygiene opportunities during the delivery of anaesthesia (149 per hour on average) – in fact, it would have consumed more than an hour of each anaesthetists time! Importantly, the observation was done via video camera, so is probably a better reflection of actual compliance. It is little surprise then that the hand hygiene compliance rate was so low (a dire 2.9%). So, before berating our anaesthetic colleagues, we may need to think of some new models of defining critical control points related to hand hygiene for this specialist group. And then berate them (with love and support) for failing to meet them!

Image credit: youtube.