Study suggests hand-washing helps decrease nursing home deaths

A new study has founds that using hospital hand-hygiene protocols can help decrease nursing home deaths, according to an article on the McKnights website.

“Hand hygiene protocols have traditionally focused on acute-care settings. Our study is changing this narrative, underscoring that we can take a proven intervention practice and make it work outside of the hospital space, by specifically adapting it to long-term settings,” said Laura Temime, lead author of the study and a professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, in Paris, in a press release.

Researchers targeted 26 nursing homes in France in 2014. They implemented the hand-hygiene methods in half.

The intervention included giving all parties greater access to hand sanitizer, launching a campaign to promote hand hygiene, and forming localized work groups at each care site to pour over guidelines and educate employees.

Read the article.