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The research was conducted by 6 researchers from different medical specialties. The researchers were; Willmott, Nicholson, Busse, MacArthur, Brookes, and Campbell. All the researchers have a background in social and community medicine. Specifically, they are from the University of Bristol, School of Social and Community Medicine; thus indicating that they have the relevant knowledge required for researching handwashing interventions. The purpose of the research was to establish whether handwashing is effective for reducing illness among children in educational settings. The research is important because studies have determined that hand washing is an effective method for reducing communicable diseases such as gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases. The study is also important because of limited studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of handwashing interventions among children in educational settings.
The study hypothesized that H0: hand hygiene interventions are effective at reducing gastrointestinal and respiratory illness among children in educational settings . The researchers also focused on the staff; thus based on this objective, the study hypothesized that H0: hand hygiene interventions are effective at reducing gastrointestinal and respiratory illness among staffs working in children educational settings . The researchers expected that the study would indicate that handwashing reduces illness among children and staff
The researchers used systematic and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCT). Only articles that focused on formal educational settings were included; thus articles on domestic and community settings were excluded. Other inclusion criteria included 2-6 years and 5-12 years. This inclusion criterion for age was important because countries have different school entry ages; thus the age range ensured that all the primary school-going children were considered. To obtain the relevant articles, various keywords such as hand hygiene, health education, hygiene in daycare children, among others were used. The articles that met the inclusion criteria were checked for eligibility by the first and the second reviewer.
The abstracts were reviewed by two independent reviewers. I case of disagreements, the screening of the full paper was done; if there was no consensus after a full review, the articles were excluded. 18 studies were left after the exclusion of the studies that did not meet the inclusion criteria. After choosing the articles that should be included, the data was collected by two reviewers independently. The data collected by each reviewer was then compared and moderated if there were differences.
The results indicated that handwashing interventions may lead to the reduction of gastrointestinal and respiratory infections among children in educational settings. They also established that handwashing hygiene results in the improvement of both the children and staff attitudes hygiene behavior, knowledge, and attitudes. Although the researcher established that hand hygiene can reduce infections, they indicated that the RCTs reviewed had poor quality reporting. Thus authors argued that the studies should improve the quality of reporting to enhance the use of these studies as evidence-based protocols. The researchers recommended that future randomized controlled trials should avoid design flaws by improving reporting of the clusters. The second recommendation was that the trials should use laboratory tests to identify infections instead of relying on physical examination. The third recommendation is the inclusion of process evaluation to determine the acceptability of the intervention.
The study has an impact on my life because I have learned that handwashing is important for reducing infection; both in adults and children. Therefore, I will raise community awareness on the importance of handwashing to reduce the common illness that causes deaths and hospitalization of many children and adults.
Works Cited
Willmott, Micky, et al. Effectiveness of Hand Hygiene Interventions in Reducing Illness Absence among Children in Educational Settings: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Archives of Disease in Childhood, vol. 101, no. 1, 2015, pp. 4250, Web.
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