Do physicians clean their hands? Insights from a covert observational study. | PSNet

Provide Feedback |

Submit a Case

Register

Study

Do physicians clean their hands? Insights from a covert observational study.

July 27, 2016

Kovacs-Litman A, Wong K, Shojania KG, et al. J Hosp Med. 2016;11(12):862-864.

View more articles from the same authors.

This study compared covert hand hygiene observation by students to traditional overt hand hygiene audits. Investigators found much lower hand hygiene performance with covert observation, especially for nurses, suggesting that covert observation may be more accurate. These results demonstrate the challenge of achieving optimal hand hygiene compliance.

PubMed citation

Related Resources From the Same Author(s)

A primer on PDSA: executing plan–do–study–act cycles in practice, not just in name.

February 15, 2017

Estimating deaths due to medical error: the ongoing controversy and why it matters.

October 26, 2016

'Bad apples': time to redefine as a type of systems problem?

June 26, 2013

Quality improvement in medical education: current state and future directions.

January 18, 2012

Deaths due to medical error: jumbo jets or just small propeller planes?

August 8, 2012

The frustrating case of incident-reporting systems.

May 20, 2009

Incident reporting systems: what will it take to make them less frustrating and achieve anything useful?

December 1, 2021

The elephant of patient safety: what you see depends on how you look.

August 25, 2010

Teaching quality improvement and patient safety to trainees: a systematic review.

June 30, 2010

Evidence-based medicine: a cornerstone for clinical care but not for quality improvement.

May 15, 2019

Clinicians in quality improvement: a new career pathway in academic medicine.

February 25, 2009

Looking back on the history of patient safety: an opportunity to reflect and ponder future challenges.

November 3, 2021

The faces of errors: a case-based approach to educating providers, policy makers, and the public about patient safety.

March 6, 2005

Root-cause analysis: swatting at mosquitoes versus draining the swamp.

March 22, 2017

Trends in adverse events over time: why are we not improving?

March 27, 2013

Implementing patient safety interventions in your hospital: what to try and what to avoid.

March 12, 2008

The vanishing nonforensic autopsy.

March 12, 2008

Hospital mortality: when failure is not a good measure of success.

July 30, 2008

Sustaining quality improvement and patient safety training in graduate medical education: lessons from social theory.

September 11, 2013

'I think we should just listen and get out': a qualitative exploration of views and experiences of Patient Safety Walkrounds.

March 12, 2014

Can SBAR be implemented with high fidelity and does it improve communication between healthcare workers? A systematic review.

January 12, 2022

Application of a trigger tool in near real time to inform quality improvement activities: a prospective study in a general medicine ward.

March 18, 2015

Graduate medical education and patient safety: a busy--and occasionally hazardous--intersection.

November 1, 2006

The tension between needing to improve care and knowing how to do it.

August 15, 2007

Effects of computerized physician order entry and clinical decision support systems on medication safety: a systematic review.

July 18, 2007

Computerised provider order entry and residency education in an academic medical centre.

August 1, 2012

Identifying adverse events: reflections on an imperfect gold standard after 20 years of patient safety research.

March 25, 2020

Patient safety at the crossroads.

May 4, 2016

Temporal trends in patient safety in the Netherlands: reductions in preventable adverse events or the end of adverse events as a useful metric?

August 5, 2015

Improving patient safety: moving beyond the "hype" of medical errors.

October 26, 2005

Medication reconciliation during transitions of care as a patient safety strategy: a systematic review.

March 20, 2013

Usability evaluation of order sets in a computerized provider order entry system.

August 24, 2011

Does user-centred design affect the efficiency, usability and safety of CPOE order sets?

May 4, 2011

Vulnerability of the medical product supply chain: the wake-up call of COVID-19.

November 25, 2020

Putting out fires: a qualitative study exploring the use of patient complaints to drive improvement at three academic hospitals.

July 10, 2019

Changes in rates of autopsy-detected diagnostic errors over time: a systematic review.

March 27, 2005

Clinical problem-solving. Lost in transcription.

October 18, 2006

Combining ratings from multiple physician reviewers helped to overcome the uncertainty associated with adverse event classification.

August 29, 2007

Multiple interacting factors influence adherence, and outcomes associated with surgical safety checklists: a qualitative study.

November 12, 2014

Safe but sound: patient safety meets evidence-based medicine.

April 12, 2006

Does full disclosure of medical errors affect malpractice liability? The jury is still out.

March 6, 2005

Effect of point-of-care computer reminders on physician behaviour: a systematic review.

March 24, 2010

Effects of rapid response systems on clinical outcomes: systematic review and meta-analysis.

January 2, 2008

Introducing the patient safety professional: why, what, who, how, and where?

September 28, 2011

A qualitative analysis of physician perspectives on missed and delayed outpatient diagnosis: the focus on system-related factors.

September 24, 2014

The effects of on-screen, point of care computer reminders on processes and outcomes of care.

September 2, 2009

Patient safety in emergency medical services: a systematic review of the literature.

December 21, 2011

Adverse events detected by clinical surveillance on an obstetric service.

November 15, 2006

Building the bridge to quality: an urgent call to integrate quality improvement and patient safety education with clinical care

October 2, 2019

Using prospective clinical surveillance to identify adverse events in hospital.

March 30, 2011

Striving for high reliability in healthcare: a qualitative study of the implementation of a hospital safety programme.

June 22, 2022

Use of an interactive, telephone-based self-management support program to identify adverse events among ambulatory diabetes patients.

April 16, 2008

The many faces of error disclosure: a common set of elements and a definition.

April 4, 2007

Expanding the scope of Critical Care Rapid Response Teams: a feasible approach to identify adverse events. A prospective observational cohort.

July 15, 2015

Explanation and elaboration of the SQUIRE (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence) Guidelines, V.2.0: examples of SQUIRE elements in the healthcare improvement literature.

May 25, 2016

Temporal clustering of critical illness events on medical wards.

July 26, 2023

Lessons from "unexpected increased mortality after implementation of a commercially sold computerized physician order entry system."

August 16, 2006

Communication failure: analysis of prescribers' use of an internal free-text field on electronic prescriptions.

March 7, 2018

Safe medication prescribing and monitoring in the outpatient setting.

May 17, 2006

Overestimation of clinical diagnostic performance caused by low necropsy rates.

December 14, 2005

Evaluation of harm associated with high dose-range clinical decision support overrides in the intensive care unit.

January 23, 2019

Prospective evaluation of medication-related clinical decision support over-rides in the intensive care unit.

February 28, 2018

Use of a public health law framework to improve medication safety by anesthesia providers.

March 20, 2019

Good Catch Campaign: improving the perioperative culture of safety.

July 18, 2018

The role of communication in paediatric drug safety.

May 23, 2007

Flying lessons for clinicians: developing system 2 practice.

June 21, 2017

A systematic review of interventions to follow-up test results pending at discharge.

February 7, 2018

COVID-19: to be or not to be; that is the diagnostic question.

July 8, 2020

Crowd-sourced hospital ratings are correlated with patient satisfaction but not surgical safety.

June 9, 2021

Saving lives by studying deaths: using standardized mortality reviews to improve inpatient safety.

August 31, 2011

Standard admission order sets promote ordering of unnecessary investigations: a quasi-randomised evaluation in a simulated setting.

November 8, 2017

Association of hospital employee satisfaction with patient safety and satisfaction within Veterans Affairs medical centers.

April 3, 2019

Medication safety in the operating room: a survey of preparation methods and drug concentration consistencies in children's hospitals in the United States.

September 24, 2014

What happens between visits? Adverse and potential adverse events among a low-income, urban, ambulatory population with diabetes.

May 5, 2010

The association between a prolonged stay in the emergency department and adverse events in older patients admitted to hospital: a retrospective cohort study.

February 16, 2011

Patient safety instruction in US health professions education.

December 21, 2011

Best practices: an electronic drug alert program to improve safety in an accountable care environment.

July 1, 2015

PEARLS for systems integration: a modified PEARLS framework for debriefing systems-focused simulations.

July 31, 2019

New solutions to reduce wrong route medication errors.

December 13, 2017

Seasoned surgeons assessed in a laparoscopic surgical crisis.

May 13, 2009

The top patient safety strategies that can be encouraged for adoption now.

March 13, 2013

Investigating patient safety culture across a health system: multilevel modelling of differences associated with service types and staff demographics.

July 25, 2012

High-priority drug-drug interaction clinical decision support overrides in a newly implemented commercial computerized provider order-entry system: override appropriateness and adverse drug events.

May 20, 2020

The power of regret.

October 25, 2017

Off the record — avoiding the pitfalls of going electronic.

April 30, 2008

Advancing the science of patient safety.

May 25, 2011

Laboratory session to improve first-year pharmacy students' knowledge and confidence concerning the prevention of medication errors.

November 11, 2009

Work-hour restrictions as an ethical dilemma for residents.

May 3, 2006

Safety competency: exploring the impact of environmental and personal factors on the nurse's ability to deliver safe care.

October 19, 2022

Opioid prescribing trends and the physician’s role in responding to the public health crisis.

February 20, 2019

Surgical safety checklist: implementation in an ambulatory surgical facility.

May 1, 2013

Error reduction and performance improvement in the emergency department through formal teamwork training: evaluation results of the MedTeams project.

March 27, 2005

The e-Autopsy/e-Biopsy: a systematic chart review to increase safety and diagnostic accuracy.

October 26, 2022

Medication errors in pediatric anesthesia: a report from the Wake Up Safe quality improvement initiative.

November 22, 2017

Human factors and simulation in emergency medicine.

March 21, 2018

Impact of a clinical pharmacy admission medication reconciliation program on medication errors in "high-risk" patients.

February 19, 2014

Minimising medication errors in children.

February 25, 2009

High-reliability and the I-PASS communication tool.

April 5, 2017

Promoting patient safety: one company's example.

December 13, 2006

Discrepancies between prescribed and actual pediatric home parenteral nutrition solutions.

November 2, 2016

View More

Related Resources

Healthcare-associated adverse events in alternate level of care patients awaiting long-term care in hospital.

September 14, 2022

Out of sight, out of mind: a prospective observational study to estimate the duration of the Hawthorne effect on hand hygiene events.

November 11, 2020

Interview

In Conversation With… Vineet Chopra, MD, MSc

October 30, 2019

Study of a multisite prospective adverse event surveillance system.

July 31, 2019

Flawed self-assessment in hand hygiene: a major contributor to infections in clinical practice?

July 31, 2019

Evaluation of an electronic health record structured discharge summary to provide real time adverse event reporting in thoracic surgery.

March 13, 2019

How not to waste a crisis: a qualitative study of problem definition and its consequences in three hospitals.

March 13, 2019

Adverse events and patient outcomes among hospitalized children cared for by general pediatricians vs hospitalists.

January 9, 2019

Racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in patient safety events for hospitalized children.

December 19, 2018

Patient safety climate strength: a concept that requires more attention.

August 31, 2016

Learning From Mistakes.

August 31, 2016

Fighting MRSA infections in hospital care: how organizational factors matter.

August 17, 2016

Potentially preventable 30-day hospital readmissions at a children's hospital.

August 10, 2016

Hospital at night: an organizational design that provides safer care at night.

August 10, 2016

Adverse Events in Rehabilitation Hospitals: National Incidence Among Medicare Beneficiaries.

July 27, 2016

Staying silent about safety issues: conceptualizing and measuring safety silence motives.

July 20, 2016

Tackling disrespectful, unprofessional provider behaviors.

July 13, 2016

Factors influencing a nurse's decision to question medication administration in a neonatal clinical care unit.

June 29, 2016

Increased risk of burnout for physicians and nurses involved in a patient safety incident.

June 15, 2016

Encouraging employees to speak up to prevent infections: opportunities to leverage quality improvement and care management processes.

May 18, 2016

Application of a trigger tool in near real time to inform quality improvement activities: a prospective study in a general medicine ward.

March 18, 2015

Rapid response systems and collective (in)competence: an exploratory analysis of intraprofessional and interprofessional activation factors.

January 28, 2015

Healthcare Inspection: Evaluation of the Veterans Health Administration's National Consult Delay Review and Associated Fact Sheet.

January 14, 2015

A qualitative study of senior hospital managers' views on current and innovative strategies to improve hand hygiene.

December 3, 2014

Quantification of the Hawthorne effect in hand hygiene compliance monitoring using an electronic monitoring system: a retrospective cohort study.

November 26, 2014

Sociocultural factors influencing incident reporting among physicians and nurses: understanding frames underlying self- and peer-reporting practices.

October 15, 2014

Achieving a climate for patient safety by focusing on relationships.

October 1, 2014

The inevitability of physician burnout: implications for interventions.

August 13, 2014

Morning handover of on-call issues: opportunities for improvement.

August 6, 2014

Barriers and success factors to the implementation of a multi-site prospective adverse event surveillance system.

July 23, 2014

View More

See More About The Topic

Health Care Executives and Administrators

Organizational Behaviorists

Hospital Medicine

Nosocomial Infections

To sign up for updates or to access your subscriber preferences, please enter your email address below.

5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20857
Telephone: (301) 427-1364