A personal memory aid augmenting the ‘My five moments for hand hygiene’ concept

Introduction / objectives Human memory capacity is limited and even relatively simple concepts are not easily retained if not central to the individual’s emotional engagement. The ‘My five moments for hand hygiene’ (Sax H, et al. J Hosp Infect 2007;67:9-21) has been designed to be simple and ‘sticky’. But even so, as informal surveys show, only 2 of 5 hand hygiene indications are accessible in active memory and correctly reproduced by healthcare workers upon request.