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Handwashing Saves Lives

Patient and physician co-washing may increase clinic hand washing

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Accountability.

And partnership.

We know that when we have both, good things usually occur.

The March/April 2017 issue of the Annals of Family Medicine discusses a new approach to outpatient hand washing involving that involves both partnership and accountability: patient and physician co-washing.

And preliminary studies show that this practice may increase hand washing.

Gregory A. Doyle, M.D. (from West Virginia University in Morgantown), and his colleagues tested a new approach involving patient and physician hand washing.
Clinicians offered sanitizer to the patient and used the sanitizer to wash their own hands in front of the patient.
Data were included from 384 questionnaires: 184 from phase 1 (pre-intervention) and 200 from phase 2 (post-intervention).

The researchers found that, according to patients, doctors washed their hands 96.6 and 99.5 percent of the time before examining them pre-intervention and post-intervention, respectively.

Overall, 98.7 percent of the time patients endorsed the importance of hand washing.

“Further research is recommended to determine whether ‘co-washing’ enhances clinic hand washing or hand washing at home by patients, and whether it can reduce infection rates,” the authors write.

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