Hand Hygiene Compliance and Healthcare Associated Infections Trends in a Tertiary Care Children Hospital, in Years 2016-2022

Healthcare workers hands are the most common vehicle for the transmission of healthcare-associated infections. Hand hygiene is considered the most effective measure for preventing microbial pathogen cross-transmission, and reducing healthcare-associated infections; thus, it’s key to maintain high healthcare workers compliance with this practice. We calculated trends of compliance to hand hygiene and healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) point prevalence in a tertiary care children hospital, in years 2016–2022. We observed a significantly increased hand hygiene compliance from 89.5% (95% CI: 89.1-89.9) in 2016 to 92.1% (95% CI: 91.7-92.4; p<0.001) in 2022. Hand hygiene compliance significantly increased for four out of five moments for hand hygiene, and for most of the professional categories observed. We observed a stable trend of HAIs point prevalence which was 1.8% (95% CI: 0.7-3.6) in 2016, and 2.0% (95% CI:1.0-3.7; p=0.6) in 2022. No significant trends were observed over time stratifying by type of HAIs. Our results document the increased adherence to hand hygiene in the context of pandemic emergency response, associated to maintenance of low prevalence of HAIs.