• Anne Collins McLaughlin, Fran Walsh, and Michelle Bryant.
• Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Box 7650, Raleigh, NC 27608, USA. Anne_McLaughlin@ncsu.edu
• Hum Factors. 2013 Aug 1;55(4):803-14.

ObjectiveA study was conducted to measure the effects of attitudes and beliefs on the risk judgments of health care workers.BackgroundLack of hand hygiene compliance is a worldwide issue in health care, contributing to infections, fatalities, and increased health care costs. Human factors methods are a promising solution to the problem of compliance, although thus far, the concentration has been on process and engineering methods, such as the design of no-touch sinks. Factors internal to the health care worker, such as their attitudes and beliefs about hand hygiene, have received less attention.MethodFor this study, three groups of health care workers completed measures of attitudes, control beliefs, and hand hygiene knowledge. They then provided risk judgments of touching various surfaces via a factorial survey.ResultsAttitudes, knowledge, control beliefs, and surface type all predicted the risk judgments of the sample of health care workers, with differences between professional groups.ConclusionHealth care workers perceive less risk when touching surfaces,which may explain historically low rates of hand hygiene compliance after surface contact.ApplicationAlthough more research is needed to directly connect risk judgments to failures of hand hygiene, the current results can inform interventions targeting the internal attitudes and beliefs of health care workers.

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