The impact of activating an empathic focus during COVID19 on healthcare workers motivation for hand hygiene compliance in moments serving the protection of others: a randomized controlled trial study

AIM: The “Five moments of hand hygiene” (World Health Organization 2009) can be classified into moments of hand hygiene before and after patient care. Based on research indicating that hand hygiene compliance differs with regard to moments before and after patient care, this research evaluates the effectiveness of an empathy-based intervention in motivating hand hygiene compliance with regard to moments before patient care which protect vulnerable individuals from contamination and infection. SUBJECTS AND METHOD: An online experiment involving 68 healthcare professionals working at a German hospital during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic investigates whether instructing healthcare professionals to consider consequences for others (vs for themselves) if they contracted SARS-CoV-2 promotes hand hygiene compliance referring to moments before (vs after) patient care. RESULTS: In the condition in which healthcare professionals considered consequences for others if they contracted SARS-CoV-2 (other-focus condition), ratings of importance increased (M = 3.49, SD = 1.30) compared to the condition in which healthcare professionals considered consequences for themselves (M = 2.68, SD = 1.24), F(1,66) = 6.87, p = .011, (part)η(2) = .09. Participants in the other-focus condition reported more intentions to comply with “before moments” in the future (M = 3.34, SD = 1.14) compared to participants in the self-focus condition (M = 2.77, SD = 0.80), F(1,66) = 6.15, p = .016, (part)η(2) = .09. CONCLUSION: Results indicate that activating an empathic focus in the context of the current pandemic promotes perceived importance and motivation of healthcare professionals to comply with moments aiming at protecting vulnerable others. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10389-022-01725-z.