How "user friendly" is the hospital for practicing hand hygiene? An ergonomic evaluation.
BACKGROUND
An important cause of nonoptimal hand hygiene may be lack of "user friendliness" of hand hygiene resources due to violation of ergonomic principles in the design of the hospital environment and lack of timely replenishment of consumable resources.


METHODS
An ergonomics-based tool, SWAG (for the four main hand hygiene resources-sinks, waste receptacles, alcohol-based hand rub dispensers, and gloves) was developed and implemented to assess the intensive care units and 59 individual rooms in the hospital for structural ergonomic characteristics that facilitate usage of these resources.


RESULTS
Several deficiencies in the structural layout of hand hygiene resources were identified that hinder their usage, such as poor visibility, difficulty of access, placement at undesirable height, lack of redundancy, and wide spatial separation of resources that are used sequentially. Consumable hand hygiene resources were often not available because of lack of timely replenishment.


CONCLUSIONS
Many simple inexpensive changes using ergonomic principles can be implemented to promote hand hygiene in hospitals.
Suresh
Gautham
G
Department of Pediatrics, Medical University of South Carolina Children's Hospital, Charleston, USA. gautham.suresh@hitchcock.org
Cahill
John
J
D006804:Ergonomics; D000431:Ethanol; D017575:Gloves, Protective; D006235:Hand Disinfection; D006761:Hospitals; D006801:Humans; D006920:Hygiene; D012915:Soaps; D014941:Work Simplification
D012915:Soaps; D000431:Ethanol