Are Soap, Paper Towel and Alcohol-based Disinfectants Easily Accessible in Intensive Care Units in Turkey?: Results of the Phokai Study

Abstract

Introduction: Hand hygiene is one of the most effective infection control measures to prevent the spread of healthcare-associated infections (HCAI). Water, soap, paper towel and hand disinfectant must be available and adequate in terms of effective hand hygiene. The adequacy of hand hygiene products or keeping water-soap and paper towel is still a problem for many developing countries like Turkey. In this multicenter study, we analyzed the adequacy in number and availability of hand hygiene products.

Materials and Methods: This study was performed in all intensive care units (ICUs) of 41 hospitals (27 tertiary-care educational, 10 state and four private hospitals) from 22 cities located in seven geographical regions of Turkey. We analyzed water, soap, paper towel and alcohol-based hand disinfectant adequacy on four different days, two of which were in summer during the vacation time (August, 27th and 31st 2016) and two in autumn (October, 12th and 15th 2016).

Results: The total number of ICUs and intensive care beds in 41 participating centers were 214 and 2357, respectively. Overall, there was no soap in 3-11% of sinks and no paper towel in 10-18% of sinks while there was no alcohol-based hand disinfectant in 1-4.7% of hand disinfectant units on the observation days. When we compared the number of sinks with soap and/or paper towel on weekdays vs. weekends, there was no significant difference in summer. However, on autumn weekdays, the number of sinks with soap and paper towel was significantly lower on weekend days (p<0.0001, p<0.0001) while the number of hand disinfectant units with alcohol-based disinfectant was significantly higher (p<0.0001).

Conclusion: There should be adequate and accessible hand hygiene materials for effective hand hygiene. In this study, we found that soap and paper towels were inadequate on the observation days in 3-11% and 10-18% of units, respectively. Attention should be paid on soap and paper towel supply at weekends as well.