Improving hand hygiene in a low-resource setting: A nurse-led quality improvement project

Hand hygiene is a simple but often ignored practice in health care systems worldwide, but it is integral for nosocomial infection prevention, with many hospital-acquired infections being linked to inadequate hand hygiene practice. At the burns unit in Kamuzu Central Hospital, 50% of patients were found to have acquired pseudomonas infections: one of the contributing factors being inadequate hand hygiene. This quality improvement project was part of a course for nurses to introduce change for patient benefit, with the aim of increasing the baseline figures for hand hygiene practices and hand hygiene facilities from 37% and 22%, respectively (baseline collected in November 2019). Using robust, standard quality improvement processes, measures were put in place such as checklists to observe hand hygiene compliance and facilities, appointment of a hand hygiene committee who monitored and sustained activities of the project, procurement and distribution of handrub and placement of hand-washing buckets and soap at strategic points. The project saw an increase in availability of hand-washing facilities to 95.6% and hand hygiene practices increase to >80% within 6 months. The project demonstrates that low cost interventions, led by nurses, can make a real difference to practice in resource poor countries.