A study reveals that doctors and nurses are washing their hands less often towards the end of their shifts.
Researchers discovered that the increased neglect in washing their hands is caused by the demands of the job of being medical staff in a hospital, eroding the mental reserves of doctors, nurses and other staff members that deal with patients, making them disregard the rules.
The study, which was published by the American Psychological Association, analyzed data on how doctors and nurses wash their hands over a period of three years. The data involved 4,157 members of the medical staff across 35 different hospitals.
General hospital protocols state that medical staff should be washing their hands within a certain timeframe of going in or coming out of a patient's hospital room.
However, the research team found that compliance to the protocol decreased by an average of 8.7 percent when comparing the start and the end of the usual 12-hour shift for medical personnel.
The decrease in compliance was even higher when the medical personnel had to work harder to address issues in the hospital.
The effect of the non-compliance could have led to the production of 34 extra infections for every 1,000 patients, according to a separate study that was cited by the research team.
"Just as the repeated exercise of muscles leads to physical fatigue, repeated use of executive resources (cognitive resources that allow people to control their behaviour, desires and emotions) produces a decline in an individual's self-regulatory capacity," wrote the researchers in their published study.
The researchers also found out that the medical staff followed the rules for washing hands more after they took longer breaks within their shift.
Hengchen Dai, from the University of Pennsylvania and the study's lead researcher, said that demanding jobs such as those that medical staff are working in could energize the employees. However, the pressure that comes with the job could shift their focus towards maintaining a high level of performance in carrying out their primary roles, such as assessing patients and administering medication, as opposed to activities viewed as lower in priority such as washing hands. This becomes even more relevant once the doctor or nurse has become fatigued.
The data that the researchers used for the study were from an unspecified company that utilizes radio tags that monitors if medical personnel are washing their hands or not when going in or coming out of a patient's room.
Of the medical personnel in the study, 65 percent were nurses, 4 percent were doctors, and the rest was composed of medical technicians, therapists and other medical staff that deal with the patients.
