Student Consultants Tackle Hand Hygiene at Local Hospital

In academic 2012, a team of students from across campus volunteered with a local hospital to evaluate compliance with its hand hygiene practices. The students spent 10 weeks assessing the problem and developing recommendations.

Through this process, they discovered that hand hygiene compliance was nearly 100 percent for attending physicians, but significantly lower among residents and interns.  Reminders and educational materials were not effective, and these employees did not remember much of what they were taught about hygiene during orientation.

The multidisciplinary team recommended a branding strategy to make these materials more impactful, and they proposed incorporating bi-annual hand hygiene presentations into the hospital’s lunch lecture series to better educate staff and reinforce desired behavior.

Project manager Elena Kaye summarized her experience this way: “I really enjoyed working [on this type of project] and would recommend it to all Stanford students! It gave me an opportunity to develop better management skills. And it gave me a chance to better understand what goes on inside a hospital. It was unforgettable!”