Background
Patient empowerment is recognized as an important component of a multimodal strategy
to improve hand hygiene adherence. We examined the attitudes of adult patients and
parents of pediatric patients toward a new patient empowerment tool (PET) at our hospital.
We also surveyed physicians to determine their perceptions about the PET.
Methods
A cross-sectional survey was performed of hospitalized children's parents and adult
patients in a 531-bed tertiary care teaching hospital in West Virginia. Surveys were
anonymous and self-administered. A separate survey was administered via e-mail to
resident and attending physicians from the departments of internal medicine, pediatrics,
and family medicine.
Results
Most parents and adult patients felt it was their role to speak up if a provider did
not perform hand hygiene, but a smaller number actually felt comfortable using the
PET. Only 54.9% of physicians felt that patients should be involved in reminding providers
to perform hand hygiene. Overall, physicians indicated that they would prefer a patient
to use words rather than the PET to remind them to perform hand hygiene.
Conclusions
In our study, parents and adult patients supported use of the PET, but physicians
were less supportive. As the patient empowerment movement grows, we should work to
improve physician acceptance of patient involvement if it is to be successful.
Key Words
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Article Info
Footnotes
Funding/support: K.G. was partially supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award no. U54GM104942 .
Conflicts of interest: None to report.
Disclaimer: The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the views of the National Institutes of Health.
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Copyright
© 2017 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
