When Leon Bender, a 68-year-old urologist from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center was on a South Seas cruise he noticed they had the passengers who had gone ashore use Purell, an anti-bacterial product manufactured by Pfizer Inc. (PFE), before they could reboard. He wondered why his hospital, and others, didn't require similar germ spreading prevention techniques.
In a 2000 report conducted by the Institute of Medicine it was estimated that anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 American die each year from hospital errors with one of the leading errors being the spread of bacterial infections.
In this NYTimes.com the story is told of how Bender returned from his trip wondering why doctors, of all people, practiced poor hand hygiene. The reasons--they are busy, sinks aren't always handy--made the use of alcohol-based disinfectants like Purell a viable alternative to regular hand-washing.
The key was being able to convince doctors this was something they should do without alienating them since studies show that doctors don't wash as often as they think and arrogance leads them to believe it is others who are spreading the germs, not them.
Cedars-Sinai decided to try a Hand Hygiene Safety Posse who passed out bottles of Purell to arriving doctors and then looked for opportunities to 'catch' doctors using the product where they would then reward them with a $10 Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) card.
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