Perhaps by its very nature, hospitals are places we know that produce a lot of waste each day yet we expect them to be clean, or at least disinfected, at all times. They have to be clean!
Well, HealthEast Care System in St. Paul, Minnesota launched a Six Sigma project to ensure cleanliness. The project is named, “Improving Hand hygiene Practice with Six Sigma.” Below are the details:
Aim: to increase compliance with hand hygiene practice to 80 percent or a statistically significant improvement from baseline.
Measures:
- Number of hand hygiene actions taken per 100 hand hygiene opportunities encountered (%)
- Volume of hand sanitizer used per 1,000 patient days
Lessons:
In partnership with 3M Health Care, we initiated a Six Sigma hand hygiene improvement project in a 20-bed medical-surgical intensive care unit and improved practice compliance from 36 percent to 70 percent (p< .001) with corresponding statistically significant increase in volume of hand sanitizer used. This was accomplished through the implementation of a comprehensive program that focused on changing the unit culture by addressing staff awareness/knowledge, staff decision making, supply convenience/availability, and empowering staff as well as patients and families to remind health care personnel about the hygiene procedures.
