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Table 2 Percentage of weighted average compliance with each one of the steps of the WHO technique for surgical hand preparation according to the study phase and product employed

From: Alcohol-based surgical hand preparation: translating scientific evidence into clinical practice

Compliance with each one of the steps of the WHO technique for surgical hand preparation

Pre-intervention phase

(n = 303)

Intervention phase

(n = 231)

P-Valuec

Surgical scrub with 2% chlorhexidine (%)

(n = 180)a

Surgical scrub with 10% PVPI (%)

(n = 123)b

Alcohol-based surgical hand preparation (%)

(n = 231)b

Removed jewelry

99.4

100

100

1.000

Short nails

95

100

97.8

0.341

Finger

96.6

95.9

98.2

0.762

Palm

100

100

99

0.157

Back of hand

96.6

97.4

98.2

0.946

Interdigital space

82.1

85.5

93

0.948

Thumb

85.7

87.2

96.9

0.052

Wrist

95.5

98.3

99.1

0.247

Did not get back to hands after donning forearms

13.5

18

NA

NA

Nail scrubbing

33.7

41.5

NA

NA

Hands rinsing

98.8

72.3

NA

NA

Time (min)

4.8

4.9

2.7

0.001

  1. NA not applicable
  2. aThe number of surgical hand preparation events observed per participant ranged from 1 to 24
  3. bThe number of surgical hand preparation events observed per participant ranged from 1 to 16
  4. cComparison between the pre-intervention and intervention phases by the Wilcoxon for paired samples test