Healthcare associated infections (HAI) are a threat to the health of people requiring acute
or chronic care. Since HAI can often be avoided by taking preventative measures, including
proper application of hand hygiene principles, the prevention of these infections has
received growing attention over the past decades. However, the application of preventive
measures in clinical practice remains problematic and the observed compliance with
such measures is often poor. Hand hygiene is one such area where compliance needs to
be improved. To be able to develop successful interventions for the improvement of hand
hygiene, it is essential to identify the factors influencing hand hygiene behaviour, and to
investigate which interventions best target these factors.
This thesis reports on a number of studies on the identification of behavioural and environmental
correlates of hand hygiene behaviour among healthcare workers, and the translation
of these determinants into an intervention. This chapter describes the background,
aims and theoretical framework used, and presents an introduction to the individual
studies that are part of this thesis.
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