BACKGROUND Hand hygiene compliance has improved significantly through hand hygiene promotion programs that have included poster campaign, monitoring and performance feedback, and education with special attentions to perceived subjective norms. We investigated factors associated with improved hand hygiene compliance, focusing on whether the improvement of hand hygiene compliance is associated wi...

Even though hand hygiene in hospitals is currently considered as the standard of clinical care, the history behind this practice is relatively recent. The practice of hand hygiene among health care workers was first proposed by Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (1818-1865). He was an assistant professor of Medicine, at a time when puerperal fever was a common cause of maternal mortality. While working a...

Hand hygiene (HH) is a fundamental component of any successful infection prevention and control program. Healthcare professionals and the public now accept the performance of HH before and after patient contact as an essential and expected behavior. Despite this broad acceptance of the importance of performing HH, compliance rates among healthcare professionals remain unacceptably low [1, 2]. S...

Hand hygiene is one of the major players in preventing healthcare associated infections. However, healthcare workers compliance with hand hygiene continues to be a challenge. This article will address strategies to help improving hand hygiene compliance.

Compliance with hand hygiene is widely recognized as the most important factor in preventing transmission of infection to patients in health care settings. However, there is no standardized method for measuring compliance. The three major methods used are direct observation, self-report and indirect measurement of hand hygiene product usage. This review discusses the methods of compliance monit...