Preliminary Results Suggests Use of Alcohol-based Hand Sanitizer Has Been Widely Accepted by Health Care Workers at Cook Children's.

Early results suggest measuring amount of alcohol-based hand sanitizer that is used could bolster the results of hand hygiene audits on specific units within the medical center, typically showing almost 100 percent compliance with hand hygiene, of which 70-80% is hand sanitizer.

Using data from Materials Management regarding delivery of alcohol-based hand sanitizer, Infection Prevention calculated the quantity of hand gel consumed per in-patient day on each unit of the 4 months Oct. 1, 2023 - Jan. 31, 2024 for 16 inpatient units. High peaks by specific units could be a result of delivery of product, rather than usage, though we have not gone to specific units to see how much surplus alcohol-based hand rub is on hand. Lower use, likewise, could be a result of using up surplus hand gel that had been previously ordered or a greater amount of hand washing.

Dividing the Area under the curve by the 16 inpatient units = 1476/16 = 92.25 ml per patient. If we assume that each pump releases about 1.2 ml and that we "gel in" before patient contact and "gel out" after patient contact, that would be about 38 touches per day on average. Sound about right? (Consider vitals, nursing assessments, physician visits, ancillary services). See if you can guess which unit is psychiatry.

We would expect to see most highs and lows level out over time (regression to the mean). In April, we'll have 6 months of data to review. In the meantime, remember to "gel in" and "gel out" and review the policy regarding hand hygiene and fingernails.