Patients’ Family Empowering to Increase Hand Hygiene (HH) Compliance in Health-Care Workers (HCW) from a Hematology-Oncology Ward in Mexico City

BACKGROUND: HH is a key component to decrease infections in hospitals, but compliance in HCW remains low. We present a six-month strategy to empower patients’ caregivers on HCW HH compliance. METHODS: HH compliance in HCWs was evaluated between June 1 and August 31, 2017 as recommended by WHO. Between September 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017 we undertook the empowering in the hematology-oncology ward (50 beds) from Instituto Nacional de Cancerologia, a cancer referral, teaching hospital in Mexico. To empower patients and their caregivers, a member of the team visited the patient and their relatives during the first 24h of hospital admission. Standarized information on HH and the importance of HCW compliance was given, along with a printed cartoon on HH opportunities (5 moments from WHO). Patients and their caregivers were trained to observe and record HH opportunties, an were invited to remind HCWs if HH omissions were observed. Data on HH compliance was collected monthly during the empowerment and 1 month after. Data was compared with the HH compliance from the 6 previous. We compared overall compliance and for each 5 HH moments before and after the empowering (chi (2) test). RESULTS: We empowered 82 caregivers (M: 25.6%) and F: 74.4%), mean age 44 years. 24.4% had completed primary education, and 13.1% had higher education. Mothers and spouses were the primary caregivers (28.1% and 36.6%). HH compliance increased in all 5 moments: Before touching a patient (M1) (B: 9.5%, A: 57.6%, P = 0.005); before a clean or aseptic procedure (M2) (B: 7.9%, A: 48%, P = 0.002); after body fluid exposure (M3) (B: 10%, A: 59%, P = 0.0005), after touching a patient (M4) (B: 7.4%, A: 57.9%, P = 0.0005), and after touching patient surroundings (M5) (B: 2.4%, A: 77.4%, P = 0.0008). Nurses achieved a higher increase on compliance compared with physicians. Caregivers recognition on HH increased for each opporunity, being more notorious for M2 (B:31.7%, A: 61.5%); M3 (B: 7.3%, A: 31.5%), and M4, (B: 36.5%, A: 68.7%). Perception on the importance of preventing health-care-related infections increased from 80.5% to 90.3%. CONCLUSION: Empowering patients’ primary caregivers was an effective intervention to increase HCWs HH compliance at a hematology-oncology ward. The effect of this intervention remains to be evaluated on the long-term basis, but demonstrate the importance of involving patients and their relatives on health-care delivery. DISCLOSURES: All authors: No reported disclosures.