ArticleRisk management and healthcare policy2025
Evaluating the Effectiveness of the WHO 6-Step Hand Hygiene Technique: Impact of Step Omission and Duration on Microbial Reduction.
Article in Risk management and healthcare policy, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: The World Health Organization has proposed practical recommendations for hand hygiene, which include a six-step technique for hand washing and hand rubbing with antiseptic agents. Hand hygiene has become one of the five key elements of the patient safety program. However, adherence to all six steps of hygienic handrub among medical staff is quite low. In our study, we evaluated the effectiveness of reducing microbial load on the skin of hands depending on the number of steps performed and the duration of handrub. Methods: The preparation of the contamination fluid and the contamination of the volunteers' hand skin were carried out according to the European standard EN 1500. Subsequently handrub was performed using an alcohol-based antiseptic with various modifications of the six-step technique, either excluding certain elements or reducing the time spent on each step. After the handrub, swabs were performed, and the number of viable microorganisms in the obtained samples was determined. Results: Adherence to all stages of the WHO-recommended 6-step hand hygiene technique provided effective decontamination of hand skin. Using all six steps for 30 seconds resulted in a log reduction of microorganisms up to 2.82 (mean value of colony-forming unit (CFU) = 2.024×10 Conclusion: Based on the conducted experimental studies, it can be concluded that following the WHO-recommended algorithm for hand hygiene significantly reduces the contamination of the skin surface with test cultures.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.