Challenges of transferring hand hygiene skills to clinical practice: medical students' perceptions of the impact of a self directed programme

A major challenge for medical educators is ensuring that graduates of healthcare curricular programmes are able to transfer skills learnt in a simulated environment into the reality of their clinical practice.
Preventing Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) is a major issue for the health service as it has been shown that medical staff are not good at adhering to Standard Infection Control Precautions (SICPs). Poor compliance may have its roots in a failure to learn about the importance of hand hygiene skills at medical school.
All final year medical students at the University of Dundee participate in a Cleanliness Champions programme to ensure they have the relevant skills to promote the prevention of HAIs in their foundation clinical rotations. The self directed programme which is supported by a system of mentoring, links theoretical and work based learning through a structured process of reflection.
An exploratory evaluation of the programme identified that the majority of students perceived that their own hand hygiene practice would change. They also (through their reflective accounts) identified a role for themselves as cleanliness champions in modelling best practice in the clinical area.
This study suggests that the use of a standard self directed programme can facilitate from a students’ perspective, the transfer of skills to the workplace.