![]() WHO developed the Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy to translate hand hygiene guidelines into practice at the point of care. Hand hygiene compliance levels of 40% have been reported from high-income countries, while this rate is even lower in low- and middle-income countries. Despite being a simple procedure, hand hygiene adherence levels remain insufficient, and improving compliance has been challenging notwithstanding the multitude of interventions. ![]() During the COVID-19 pandemic, hand hygiene with alcohol-based hand rub was considered globally as one of the most effective, simple and low-cost procedures against COVID-19 cross-transmission. Hand hygiene is known as the global standard of care and one of the most effective measures of infection prevention and control (IPC). However, the situation is more worrisome in low-resource settings, with approximately 15.5% of patients acquiring a HAI, although the rates may be even higher, mainly due to underreporting. The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that 4.5% of hospitalized patients acquire HAIs in the USA, and 7.1% in Europe. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are globally recognized among the most common adverse events in care delivery with significant mortality and financial burden for health systems. We recommend further research in this area to evaluate the effect of using emojis in healthcare-related behaviours. More emojis to convey health related messages are needed. However, emojis should be further studied to choose the most appropriate ones and avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation. Emojis might be helpful to address hand hygiene indications in healthcare that may eventually play a role in promoting this measure. In summary, the findings of this study indicate that the existing emojis may not be able to substitute the words used in the WHO 5 Moments poster. The existing emojis proposed for the words “hygiene”, “aseptic”, and “surrounding” seemed to be less satisfactory. We found appropriate emojis for six of the words used in the poster, includingįor exposure risk (71%). Of these, 69 (74%) were female, and the mean age of the participants was 44.6 ± 10.87 years. ![]() ResultsĪ total of 95 IPC practitioners completed the questionnaire from May to October 2019 from different countries. Data were analysed using R (version 3.6.3). Completed questionnaires were collected and analysed to determine the suitability of the existing emojis to illustrate a unified emoji poster. We developed a self-administered questionnaire to assess the view of infection prevention and control (IPC) practitioners regarding the use of emojis to show the WHO 5 Moments. Methodsįollowing a thorough review of the Unicode version 12.0, the most applicable emojis to the terms used in the WHO 5 Moments poster were extracted. To compensate for the lack of effective hand hygiene communication, we aimed to evaluate emojis as possible surrogates for the non-verbal aspects of hand hygiene behaviour. Although the WHO “My five Moments for hand hygiene” poster has been used for more than a decade to delineate hand hygiene indications and promote action, adherence levels among healthcare workers are still notoriously low and disquieting. Hand hygiene is universally recognized as a cornerstone measure for the prevention of healthcare-associated infections.
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