Use of ventilator utilization ratio for stratifying alcohol-based hand-rub consumption data to improve surveillance on intensive care units.

BACKGROUND: Germany has established a nationwide surveillance system of alcohol-based hand-rub consumption (AHC) per patient-day in hospital settings as a surrogate parameter for hand hygiene (HH) compliance. Analysis of AHC data in intensive care units (ICUs) shows not only a wide range of consumption between units of different specialties, but also within units of one specialty. This seems to reflect variation in the number of HH opportunities per patient-day between ICUs due to variation in complexity of care. AIM: To investigate whether ventilator utilization ratio (VUR) might be a good surrogate for describing complexity and intensity of care on ICUs and whether stratification by VUR works as a new method of setting benchmarks for AHC data. METHODS: Data from 365 ICUs participating in the German national nosocomial infection surveillance system (KISS) were used. VUR was calculated by dividing the number of ventilator-days per unit by the number of patient-days per unit. AHC was stratified according to VUR in quartiles. FINDINGS: The median AHC was 107mL/patient-day [interquartile range (IQR): 86-134] and the median VUR was 33% (IQR: 22-45%). The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was 0.28 (P<0.0001). After stratifying AHC according to VUR, the AHC in quartile I was significantly lower compared to quartile IV. There was also significant difference between quartile I and quartiles II and III. CONCLUSION: Stratification of AHC data according to VUR is suggested to improve the quality of benchmark parameters based on AHC data as surrogate parameter for HH compliance in ICUs.

Compliance with hand hygiene: reference data from the national hand hygiene campaign in Germany.

Hand hygiene is a key measure to prevent healthcare-associated infection. To promote hand hygiene nationally the German campaign 'Aktion Saubere Hände' was launched in January 2008, based on the World Health Organization's 'Clean Care is Safer Care' initiative. We report the first results from a full year of data collection on hand hygiene compliance recorded with the help of a renewed observation tool. Data were based on submissions from 109 participating hospitals collected from 576 wards between January 1st and December 31st, 2014. The overall median compliance was 73%, ranging from 55% (10th percentile) to 89% (90th percentile). The results demonstrated only small differences between adult and non-adult intensive care units (ICUs) with neonatal ICUs and paediatric non-ICUs maintaining higher compliance than adult care units. Performance among nurses was better than physicians, and overall rates of hand hygiene performance were significantly higher after patient contact than before.

Three years of national hand hygiene campaign in Germany: what are the key conclusions for clinical practice?

The World Health Organization (WHO) started the 'Clean Care is Safer Care' campaign in 2005. Since then, more than 120 countries have pledged to improve hand hygiene as a keystone of their national or subnational healthcare-associated infection prevention programmes. Thirty-eight countries have implemented national campaigns. Germany started a national campaign to improve hand hygiene compliance on 1 January 2008. The campaign, 'AKTION Saubere Hände', is funded by the German Ministry of Health and was initiated by the National Reference Centre for the Surveillance of Nosocomial Infections, the Society for Quality Management in Health Care and the German Coalition for Patient Safety. The campaign is designed as a multi-modal campaign based on the WHO implementation strategy. Since the end of 2010, more than 700 healthcare institutions have been actively participating in the campaign, among which are 28 university hospitals. Voluntarily participating hospitals have to implement the following measures: active support by hospital administrators of local campaign implementation, participation in a one-day introductory course, education of healthcare workers at least once a year, measurement of alcohol-based hand-rub consumption (AHC) and feedback on resulting data, implementation of the WHO 'My Five Moments for Hand Hygiene' model, increase in hand-rub availability, participation in national hand hygiene day at least every two years, and participation in national campaign network workshops at least once every two years. Observational studies to measure hand hygiene compliance are optional. Overall, there has been a significant increase of 11% in hand hygiene compliance in 62 hospitals that observed compliance before and after intervention. A total of 129 hospitals provided AHC data for three years and achieved an overall increase of 30.7%. The availability of alcohol-based hand rub increased from 86.8% to > 100% in intensive care units and from 63.6% to 91.3% in non-intensive care units. Overall, the implementation of a national campaign using the WHO multi-modal intervention strategy has led to improved hand hygiene compliance and hand-rub availability in participating settings.