Improving Nurses' Hand Hygiene Compliance using Gamification

Healthcare acquired infections are one of the biggest problems healthcare field is facing, which can end up in an increasing quantity of deaths, extra-days of hospital stay and costs for both the hospital and the patient. Performing hand hygiene is a simple and inexpensive prevention measure, but healthcare workers compliance with it is still far from desired. Recognized hurdles are lack of time, forgetfulness, wrong technique and motivation. Besides, nurses’ perception about their compliance is disturbed by a busy schedule. This study aims at exploring the use of gamification to promote nurses’ HH compliance self-awareness and action. Real-time collected from an indoor location system will provide feedback information to a group of nurses working in an ICU ward. In this paper we present our research’s motivation and methods, along with the collected results and its discussion.