Background: Hand hygiene (HH) is a key factor in hospital infection prevention and patient safety. The objectives of this article were to examine patients' observations concerning compliance with selected procedures for hospital hygiene among medical personnel and assess the correlation between patients' key demographic characteristics and their awareness and sense of safety associated with hospitalization.
Methods: The study was conducted in January 2012 on a sample of 491 subjects by means of a standardized 10-minute computer-assisted telephone interview survey.
Results: There was a statistically significant correlation between the sense of safety associated with hospitalization declared by patients and their observation of HH practices among health care personnel. A positive correlation was also found between the respondents experiencing personal complications in the form of health care-associated infections themselves or among their family members and the sense of safety associated with hospital treatment.
Conclusions: Performing HH among hospital staff is one of the factors affecting patients' increased sense of safety during their hospitalization; therefore, HH contributes to the perception of good quality of service provided. Knowledge of the risk of HH does not affect the patients' sense of safety, in contrast with their real-life experiences.
Keywords: Hand hygiene; Infection control; Patient safety.
Copyright © 2015 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.