A recent study compared the effects of hand hygiene and environmental cleaning in a healthcare setting. The researchers found increasing hand-hygiene compliance outperformed equal improvements in cleaning, according to an article on the Becker's Hospital Review website.
A 10 percent increase in hand-hygiene compliance and a 20 percent increase in cleaning thoroughness had the same effect on the reduction of organism transmission, the article said.
Even so, "environmental cleaning can have significant benefit for hospitals or individual...units that have either high hand-hygiene compliance levels or low terminal cleaning thoroughness," the study said.
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