American journal of infection control
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Am J Infect Control · Jun 2008
ReviewAn integrative review of the current evidence on the relationship between hand hygiene interventions and the incidence of health care-associated infections.
The objectives of this integrative review were to critically examine the overall state of the current evidence on the relationship between hand hygiene interventions and the incidence of health care-associated infections (HCAIs) in acute care and long-term care settings, and offer recommendations for future directions in the field based on our findings. ⋯ There is a lack of rigorous evidence linking specific hand hygiene interventions with the prevention of HCAIs. The varied nature of the interventions used and the diverse factors affecting the acquisition of HCAIs make it difficult to show the specific effect of hand hygiene alone. The most frequent methodologies currently used in this research area are before and after observational studies without a control comparison group. Based on these findings, we recommend that researchers used a modified version of Larson's 2005 criteria to guide the design and conduct of future before and after observational studies in this area. We also argue that as we accumulate stronger evidence of which interventions are most effective, we need to develop additional research approaches to study how organizations succeed and fail in fostering the uptake of evidence-based hand hygiene interventions.