Becoming Hand Hygiene Heroes: implementation of an infection prevention and control campaign for patient and family hospital safety.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that hand hygiene is key in preventing healthcare-associated infections. Patients and families are understudied targets for infection prevention and control practices. Previous campaigns to change hand hygiene behavior have been effective, but often face systemic challenges with implementation.

Methods: The "Hand Hygiene Heroes" educational campaign was developed to improve patient and family hand hygiene at two tertiary care pediatric and obstetrics hospitals. Its multiple phases included visual materials, tailored activities for nine hospital units, and long-term evaluation during a two-year period. Hand hygiene rates among patients/families and healthcare workers were measured at baseline and throughout the campaign via direct observation.

Results: Overall, hand hygiene significantly increased for both patients/families (OR 1.82, p 0.041) and healthcare workers (OR 2.15, p <0.001) after campaign initiation. However, individual units had varying degrees of sustainment on follow-up evaluations.

Discussion: Duration of intervention, activity simplicity, active participation, and resource availability may affect success of campaign initiatives. Positive prognostic factors included mixed leadership support from administration and front-line workers, pre-determined sustainability plans, and tailored activities by target audience.

Conclusions: Implementation of hospital educational campaigns can be resource-intensive but can positively impact patient and family hand hygiene.