This research paper deals with the issue of how Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can support, change and improve hand hygiene in hospitals.
Several investigations show that the large number of Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI) is the cause of both big financial costs and patients dying, and focus on hand hygiene is predicted to lower these numbers. When investigating these issues, there are several questions that emerge and need to be answered which resulted in following researchproblem:
How can user involvement improve the practice of hand hygiene, so that the number of hospital-acquired infections can be reduced?
Yet the questions seem difficult to answer, and only by including a user centered perspective on the matter, appropriate understanding of and solutions to it can be made. Therefore, in cooperation with Regional hospital Randers, the aim of this research is to investigate the practice of, knowledge of and attitudes to hand hygiene of chosen users; in this case nurses.
The methodological focus of this research paper is to include nurses in an attempt to understand the phenomenon “hand hygiene”. In order to complete this task, the research includes the following methods; focus group interviews, observations and workshop. Involving student nurses from Silkeborg Nursing School as participants, the aim of the focus group interview is to disclose perceptions of knowledge, practice and attitudes about “hand hygiene” from a user’s point of view. The purpose of the observations is to support the results from the focus group interviews. The purpose of the workshop is to find solutions and get a view on whether ICT can be applied in a hospital and which solutions are the best. In this workshop, the method “Future workshop” is combined with other creative methods, and in this way the nurses are asked to discuss chosen problems and to design their own problem solving inventions.
Conclusively, this research paper has brought to light that implementing ICT at the Region hospital Randers (in the aim to support, improve and change the standard of hand hygiene) may have a positive effect on how nurses will perceive hand hygiene. Especially the opportunity of creating more interaction between the nurses and the patients and by giving the patients more responsibility and opportunities to be aware of and practice hand hygiene. The prospect of allowing user generated content to be an elementary aspect in the use of the Region hospital appears as a crucial goal to be achieved. Also the focus of more, better and directly given information and education about hand hygiene seems to be very important. The main concern, however, will be to sustain a balance between the nurses, the experts and the patients and also the hospital as an organization whose main goal should be to offer supplementary and modern technologies to help and support all of the relevant users.