Highlights
- •A minority of patients (24%) commented to medical personnel about maintaining hygiene.
- •31%–38% of patients did not pay attention to whether medical personnel maintained hygiene.
- •Most patients (~67%) took active steps to maintain a hygienic environment.
- •Visitors who had also been hospitalized took somewhat more hygienic measures.
- •Level of religiousness and sex were associated with patient decisions to make comments.
- •Priorities and patient visits to clinics were associated with self-initiated action.
Background
Most of the studies on hospital infections have focused on the perceptions and reported
behavior of the medical personnel. This research explore the practices undertaken
both by Israeli patients and visitors, in order to maintain a hygienic hospital environment,
and to locate the variables that are associated with them.
Methods
An online survey of national representative sample of Israeli hospital's visitors
and patients adult population, who were hospitalized in the five years before the
interview (n=209), and who visited patients in hospitals in the three years before
the interview (n=454).
Results
Only a minority of patients (24%) comment to medical personnel about maintaining hygiene,
while a majority (67%-69%) took active steps to maintain a hygienic environment. The
main variables that were found to be associated with patients' making comments were
level of religiousness and gender, whereas priorities, namely whether hospital infections
were a high priority, and the frequency of the patient's visits to hospital outpatient
clinics, were associated with self-initiated action.
Conclusions
In order to reduce barriers to commenting to hospital personnel, we propose framing
the subject of hospital hygiene as a matter of health literacy and a subject of public
discourse, rather than a sole medical issue
Key Words
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: June 05, 2018
Footnotes
Funding: This research was funded by the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research , grant number 2016\134א .
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
