Hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background: Healthcare workers' (HCWs) adherence to hand hygiene is vital in combatting COVID-19 in hospitals. We aimed to investigate HCWs hand hygiene compliance before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and hypothesised that hand hygiene compliance would increase during the pandemic.Methods: We conducted a prospective observational study in three medical departments at the Regional Hospital of West Jutland, Denmark from April 2019 to August 2020. A total of 150 HCWs participated before the COVID-19 pandemic and 136 during the pandemic. Hand hygiene observations were assessed using an automated hand hygiene monitoring system. Students unpaired t-test was used to assess differences in hand hygiene compliance rates in each department.Results: Comparison analyses showed, that hand hygiene compliance in department A and B was significantly higher before the COVID-19 pandemic than during the pandemic; a 7% difference in department A and a 5% difference in department B. For department C, the total hand hygiene compliance was unchanged during the pandemic compared to before.Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic did not raise hand hygiene compliance. Further studies are needed to verify these findings and further identify barriers to hand hygiene compliance among HCWs. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Automated summary

This study investigated hand hygiene compliance among healthcare workers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings revealed that hand hygiene compliance did not increase during the pandemic. There were variations in compliance rates across different departments, with some experiencing significantly lower compliance during the pandemic compared to before, while others remained unchanged.