Less than one in three doctors and midwives caring for women in labour washed their hands after vaginal examinations of their patients, a new study has found.
The startling finding will increase concern about hygiene in hospital and the failure of staff to adhere to basic handwashing guidelines and infection control procedures.
The study was conducted at a labour ward in the UK, and its findings will be presented at a conference at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland tomorrow.
Rather than asking staff whether or not they washed their hands after internal examinations, the researchers observed practices of doctors and midwives as they cared for 20 mothers in labour at Derriford Maternity Hospital in Plymouth.
They reviewed more than 111 hours of video footage from the labour wards and found that in 85 per cent of cases staff washed their hands before vaginal examinations but only 27 per cent did afterwards.
"These findings will be powerfully illustrated by qualitative data from video clips," the authors of the study said. While gloves were worn by all staff, the problem was that in half the cases staff did not remove them afterwards.
"Extensive contamination of the environment originating from failure to remove gloves after a vaginal examination places the mother, other attendants and future occupants of the room in jeopardy," the study added.
"The low compliance with hand hygiene overall . . . questions our prevailing attitudes and beliefs. In the age of antibiotics are we failing to give asepsis the priority that it deserves?" the researchers asked.
Asepsis refers to the practice of ensuring that bacteria are excluded from open sites during medical procedures. It is a first line of defence against infection.
While the level of hand hygiene in Irish labour wards has not been studied, there have been studies of hand hygiene by Irish doctors in general. One, published in 2003, found less than half of non-consultant hospital doctors in one hospital washed their hands after attending each patient.