A new study from South Korea in the American Journal of Infection Control suggests most patients are willing to remind their healthcare provider, which prompted Reuters to report today that in fact, physicians and nurses do not like the idea of patients telling them to clean or wash their hands.
The authors of the study believe it's unclear whether it is acceptable to either patients or health workers for patients to actively participate to improve hand hygiene.
There are 75 percent of patients and 84 percent of their families that wished they had asked healthcare workers to wash their hands if they had not already done so. Only 26 percent of doctors and 31 percent of nurses support this idea out of concern surrounding negative relationship effects with patients, reports Reuters.
"Patient involvement and perceptions, as well as those of providers, are very culturally specific, so findings in one setting are not necessarily generalizable," Nasia Safdar, MD, PhD, told Reuters Health.
