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Observational bias within a hospital-wide hand hygiene program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 September 2021

Amy E. Badwaik
Affiliation:
Infection Control Department, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Department of Quality and Safety, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Robert P. Tucker
Affiliation:
Infection Control Department, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Department of Quality and Safety, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Peggy Leung
Affiliation:
Analytics, Planning, Strategy & Improvement, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Michael Klompas*
Affiliation:
Infection Control Department, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Department of Quality and Safety, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Michael Klompas, E-mail: mklompas@bwh.harvard.edu

Abstract

We assessed the extent to which healthcare workers report more favorable hand hygiene rates when observing members of their own professional group versus other groups’ observations of them. Healthcare workers consistently reported higher compliance rates for their own group compared to others’ observations of them (97 vs 92%; P ≤ .001).

Type
Concise Communication
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America

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