Abstract
Hand hygiene is important to prevent nosocomial infection, but healthcare workers' compliance with the practice of hand hygiene seems to be low. The hand hygiene technique is usually assessed by the Glitterbug or a bacterial culture method, but the Glitterbug method is an objective assessment because it is judged visually, and a cell culture using agar medium method requires a lot of time for the incubation process. In this study, we developed a quicker and easier method of assessing hand hygiene techniques using fluorescence detection, which is applicable to both scrubbing and rubbing methods. In the scrubbing method, fluorescent paint is regarded as bacteria, and the area of paint that is removed by scrubbing is measured. In the rubbing method, fluorescent paint is regarded as alcohol-based hand rub, and the area over which the paint is applied is measured. These areas are obtained by detecting fluorescence emission by image analysis using a computer program that we originally developed. We applied this method for evaluation of handhygiene techniques of volunteers under several conditions, and the time course profiles for the ratio of scrubbed or rubbed areas on hands were obtained. The results suggest that the method can evaluate hand hygiene techniques quickly and easily based on computer-based image analysis.
