Champion Handwasher Hospital Campaign

The Champion Handwasher Hospital Campaign

“A beginning to change to a culture of safety one handwash at a time”. 

Who is included: This Campaign engages ALL HCW’s, hospital administrators, patient’s and their families and the local public to benefit Patient Care. This social marketing Campaign is based on the science of Louis Pasteur( 1857) in Lille, France , Florence Nightingale RN(1856) in Barracks Hospital in Scutari, Turkey,  Joseph Lister MD(1860) in Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Ignaz Semmelweis MD(1864) in Austrian Medical Society and John Snow MD(1865) in London with the Broad Street Pump and recent research around hand hygiene in the past decade by  Maryanne McGuckin PhD, Elaine Larsen RN, PhD, Didier Petit MD, Chuck Gerba PhD and others.

What will it take for Hospitals in 2009 to become more serious about nosocomial infections in their facilities that are preventable? A brief intervention in Pittsburgh has shown to reduce nosocomial infections from 64 to 1 in a 30 day period of time. There are 100 hospitals in Switzerland who have initiated a campaign to get serious  about reducing nosocomial infections through increased vigilence around hand hygiene.It will take an understanding by hospital administrators and authority figures that it is necessary to use social marketing strategies to move to a “culture of safety” in order to make serious progress in nosocomial infections. There are a few initiatives to make improvements (i.e. 100,000 Lives Campaign) that look at a narrow scope that is easy to measure, instead of getting at what many HCW’s in Infection Control and Patient Safety know: it is the rampant cross-contamination behaviors that staff and visitors commit regularly to contribute to the nosocomial infection rates. Now there is a behavior modification Program focused around nosocomial infections that will begin to initiate the “culture of safety” that is necessary through improving “genuine communication”. It utilizes social marketing techniques to facilitate “traction” and strategies to improve “genuine communication” across levels of authority. They are using social(causal) marketing strategies in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. This Program uses the universal icon of  the hand, “Henry the Hand Champion Handwasher”, as its messenger to improve the result.

A key component of the Campaign is the “genuine communication” across levels of authority, which is a difficult hurdle to overcome, as most of the HCW have spent 12+ years in schools and other institutions being told “not to question authority” and “do what they are told”. There lies one of the inherent cultural barriers in health care we must overcome very carefully in seeking the “culture of safety”, so as not to create chaos in the work environment. So applying “genuine communication” about Hand Awareness across levels of authority by design is not a sentinel or litigious event, so theoretically there should be less  resistance by ALL parties to participate, in order to benefit Patient Safety. It is explicitly encouraged, but not limited to, to take place during each of the designated weeks using the strategies of S.B.A.R. and Crucial Conversations of Healthcare by Vital Smarts that is designed to aid in communication and empower, otherwise not empowered staff. Practicing ones delivery or script around a topic so common as handwashing and hand awareness can aid in the development of one’s confidence in communication before it comes to more egregious breaches in patient care (medication errors or surgery errors) that could be a sentinel event.

Why: There should be NO denominator for nosocomial infections. The target should be ZERO. Of the 98,000 preventable deaths each year in hospitals, 90,000 are related to nosocomial infections. Until now there have been no simple Patient Safety initiatives that focus on changing to a “culture of safety” across the spectrum of the healthcare. This Campaign will begin that change, as it emphasizes breaking down barriers to genuine communication between  traditional silos of authority: physicians, nurses, aides, clerks, families and patients. The majority of the Patient Safety initiatives have been targeting medical liability claim driven issues, not genuine patient safety issues based on mortality or morbidity. Also, there have been no grass root initiatives from practitioners, only the public, accrediting bodies, employers and Health Insurers. 

When: There are 4 specific weeks of each year that the audit (measurement) is taken; International Infection Prevention Week October 16^th-22^rd , National Handwashing Awareness Week 1st  week of December,  Patient Safety Awareness Week 2^nd week of March or National Clean Hands Week 3rd week of September. And just anytime your hospital/insittution wants to "practice".

How to get started: Identify an Ambassador (leader) in your hospital to help facilitate the Campaign and to lead a Strategic Advisory Committee (SAC), which could be an existing Patient Safety, Infection Control, Marketing or Medical Executive Committee to implement the Campaign. You will discover that the core members of the Committee is very important to ensure your success across your facility. The members should consist of the Ambassador, Facility Management representative, HR representative, PR representative, Housekeeping, clerks, Infection Control, administration, and others, in order to facilitate implementation across the breadth of the hospital.

There are 10 criteria (measures) that are on the audit tool to determine whether or not your hospital is a Champion. A grade of 70% or better denotes the “Champion Handwasher Hospital” status.  50% - 70% requires Improvement.