Standard work for room entry: Linking lean, hand hygiene, and patient-centeredness

摘要

Background: Healthcare-associated infections are costly and fatal. Substantial front-line, administrative, regulatory, and research efforts have focused on improving hand hygiene. Problem: While broad agreement exists that hand hygiene is the most important single approach to infection prevention, compliance with hand hygiene is typically only about 40%1. Coals: Our aim was to develop a standard process for room entry in the intensive care unit that improved compliance with hand hygiene and allowed for maximum efficiency. Strategy: We recognized that hand hygiene is a single step in a substantially more complicated process of room entry. We applied Lean engineering techniques to develop a standard process that included both physical steps and also standard communication elements from provider to patients and families and created a physical environment to support this.