Compliance to Hand Hygiene Guidelines in Hospital Care: A stepwise behavioural approach

textabstractHealthcare associated infections (HAI) are a threat to the health of people requiring acute or chronic care. Since HAI can often be avoided by taking preventative measures, including proper application of hand hygiene principles, the prevention of these infections has received growing attention over the past decades. However, the application of preventive measures in clinical practice remains problematic and the observed compliance with such measures is often poor. Hand hygiene is one such area where compliance needs to be improved. To be able to develop successful interventions for the improvement of hand hygiene, it is essential to identify the factors influencing hand hygiene behaviour, and to investigate which interventions best target these factors. This thesis reports on a number of studies on the identification of behavioural and environmental correlates of hand hygiene behaviour among healthcare workers, and the translation of these determinants into an intervention. This chapter describes the background, aims and theoretical framework used, and presents an introduction to the individual studies that are part of this thesis.